Tel Aviv: Iran is expanding its “maritime guerrilla” warfare in the Gulf and Red Sea with US and Israeli ships as potential targets. The Israeli navy and US fifth fleet are exchanging intelligence to be better ready for Iranian attacks mainly by unmanned explosive boats and armed UAV’s.
According to the Robert Strauss Centre, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) operates a fleet of estimated at more than 1000 small boats. A report in the website of the RUSI organization, there are two Iranian-made armed UAVs: the Shahed-129, first unveiled in 2012, and the Mohajer 6, mass produced since 2018. The report in this website claims that the design of the Shahed-129 is heavily based on the Israeli Hermes 450, which suggests that Iran may have had access to one or more Israeli models, possibly lost on a covert mission, and, in line with the broader tendency of the country, it could have reverse-engineered the foreign design. It is in service today, operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and it was assessed as capable of carrying out strikes in February 2016. The Mohajer 6 is said to have been delivered to the IRGC’s ground forces in early 2018.
Iran in recent months accelerated the development of UAV’s carrying explosives. Israeli defence sources said that Iran plans to accelerate the use of armed drones in the Gulf and Red Sea.
The US navy’s Fifth Fleet is in charge of US naval operations in the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, and portions of the Indian Ocean. It has a commander and headquarters in Bahrain.
It is believed that Iran’s maritime tactics may soon change if it is successful in constructing additional floating naval bases off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula, particularly in the Egyptian region of Bab al-Mandav and the Red Sea. According to the claims, the floating bases are just regular ships that have been modified to carry out military missions and gather intelligence.
According to international reports, Israel has already attacked one of these ships, the Sabiz, which was anchored in the Red Sea, in reprisal for an attack on an Israeli commerce ship.
Vice Admiral (Ret.) Eliezer Marom, former commander of the Israeli navy told Raksha Anirveda that as the Iranians do not have a real navy. They turned to what he calls “Maritime Guerrilla” using explosive boats and armed drones to hit American and Israeli targets. “The open fire instructions in both navies which are based on positive identification of a threat, may enable the Iranians to hit some targets but even with that fact , very sporadic,” he said.
Marom added that in the two very busy sea lanes like the Gulf and Red Sea it is easy for the Iranians to disguise their actions until they are near potential target. Recently, the Iranian navy announced the launch of its first drone division in the Indian Ocean. According to Iran International website, the first UAV carrier flotilla of Iran’s Army, comprised of surface and subsurface units equipped with various types of combat, reconnaissance and kamikaze drones, was unveiled by the southern fleet of the Navy in a ceremony attended by Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, Major general Abdolrahim Mousavi and Commander of the Iranian Navy Commodore Shahram Irani.
The website quoted Iran’s media reporting that the drones that were displayed included the Pelican, Arash, Homa, Chamrosh, Jubin, Ababil-4 and Bavar-5, but it was not clear how many vessels or drones were included in each unit, only that one ship carried 50 drones.
“Mousavi said the reconnaissance drones have increased the intelligence sway of Iran’s vessels to hundreds of kilometres beyond the borders of the country, adding that the Navy’s suicide and combat drones have leveled up Iran’s deterrence power.”
Iran is known to have supplied UAVs to its proxies in several countries across the Middle East. “The Americans and Zionists (Israel) know very well the price of using the word ‘force’ against Iran,” Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi, spokesman for the Iranian armed forces, was quoted as saying by Iranian media .
The presence of the US fifth fleet and the Israeli navy in the region is of very high importance as Saud Arabia has no effective maritime force. According to a report written by Yoel Guzansky and Tomer Barak, senior researchers in the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), even though the shipping lanes through the Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab Straits are an essential lifeline for the kingdom, in this arena too it is inferior to Iran.
“Iran for its part makes extensive use of asymmetric tactics such as a “swarm” of dozens of small and fast vessels that attack suddenly, anti-ship missiles, and massive mining of the Gulf region. In addition, in the Red Sea arena the Houthis make extensive use of naval mines and integrated attacks by unmanned vehicles (UAVs and unmanned surface vehicles). The cooperation between Iran and the Houthis in the naval dimension is also expressed in the presence of Iranian spy ships in the southern Red Sea (previously the Saviz until it was hit, and now the Behshad).”
The two researchers say that in contrast, the Saudi navy is relatively small and obsolete, and is built to contend with symmetric navies, in particular in the Gulf. At the same time, it is developing capabilities in its eastern maritime front as part of the SNEP2 deal (Saudi Naval Expansion Program; a plan for the modernization of the kingdom’s navy valued at over $20 billion). This military build-up does not match the development of the threats stemming from fast, low-signature vessels. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia’s naval capabilities in the Red Sea are significantly lower, and with respect to the expansion of the threat from the Houthis and Iran in the naval arena, Saudi Arabia has the weaker hand.
-The writer is an Israel-based freelance journalist. The views expressed are of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of Raksha Anirveda
