IRGC Drills ‘Offensive’ Tactics in Strait of Hormuz

Date: 28 July 2020 - 22:02

News ID: ۸۱۱۶۶

TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) held "large-scale” military drills off the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, sending a message to the U.S. to stop its provocations, including its last week harassment of a passenger plane in Syria.
The exercise involved naval and air forces and the Nour satellite Iran launched into orbit earlier this year was part of it, Sepah News reported. The drills involved an "operation against a mock” U.S. aircraft carrier, the Tasnim news agency reported.
The Strait of Hormuz is a chokepoint through which about one-third of the world’s oil passes through.
The IRGC in April said Tehran would destroy U.S. warships if Iran’s security is threatened in the Persian Gulf. Iranian officials have repeatedly pledged to block Hormuz if Iran is not able to export oil or if its nuclear sites are attacked.
On Tuesday, the Guards fired a missile from a helicopter targeting he replica aircraft carrier.
Iranian commandos fast-roped down from a helicopter onto the replica in the footage aired Tuesday from the exercise called "Great Prophet 14.” Other footage showed fast boats encircling the mock-up, kicking up white waves in their wake.
Iranian troops also fired anti-aircraft batteries at a drone target in the exercise from a location that national television described as being near the port city of Bandar Abbas. Troops also fired missiles launched from trucks on land and fast boats at sea, as well as shoulder-fired missiles.
The Guards will use "long-range ballistic missiles with the ability to hit far-reaching aggressor floating targets” during the drill, said Abbas Nilforoushan, the IRGC’s deputy commander for operations.
"Our policies to protect the vital interests of the dear nation of Iran are defensive, in the sense that we will not invade any country from the beginning, but we are completely aggressive in tactics and operations,” Gen. Hussein Salami, the head of the IRGC, was quoted as saying. "What was shown today at this exercise at the level of aerospace and naval forces was all offensive.”
National TV footage also showed IRGC scuba forces underwater, followed by a cutaway to a blast hole just above the waterline on the replica carrier.
The replica used in the drill resembles the Nimitz-class carriers that the U.S. Navy routinely sails into the Persian Gulf from the Strait of Hormuz. The USS Nimitz, the namesake of the class, just entered Mideast waters late last week from the Indian Ocean, likely to replace the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Arabian Sea.
It remains unclear when or if the Nimitz will pass through the Strait of Hormuz or not during its time in the Mideast. The USS Abraham Lincoln, deployed last year as tensions initially spiked, spent months in the Arabian Sea before heading through the strait. The Eisenhower came through the strait only early last week.
To Iran, which shares the strait with Oman, the American naval presence is akin to Iranian forces sailing into the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Florida. The Islamic Republic has repeatedly stressed