Both civil and military shipping in the Persian Gulf is exceptionally vulnerable to mines, cruise missiles, and fast boat attacks because its shallow straits force large ships to squeeze through predictable lines of transit.
This Clever Plan Could Let Iran Control the Persian Gulf nationalinterest.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nationalinterest.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
January 16, 2021: In Iran, the IRGC (Islamic Revolution Guard Corps) has its own “Navy of the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution”. The main job of the IRGC is to protect the religious dictatorship from the Iranian armed forces and a growing number of angry Iranians. As a result, the IRGC Navy has about as many personnel 23,000), including marines and naval aviation as the Iranian Navy. Th IRGC force has about 40 large missile and torpedo boats (100-200 tons each) and over a thousand smaller craft, many of them just speedboats with dual outboard engines and machine-gun mounts. Now the IRGC Navy has been extending its reach by building oil tankers for sale to foreign customers. The IRGC owns a growing number of commercial firms and is increasingly accused of using market manipulation and intimidation to take sales from commercial firms. The IRGC has seized or stolen billions of dollars in assets over the last few decades an