Iran will launch 10 days of naval drills from Saturday around the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial oil shipping route, media
said.
"Our naval drill will begin from Dec. 24 lasting 10 days covering
east of Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman to the Gulf of Aden," navy
Commander Admiral Habibollah Sayari was quoted as saying Thursday by the Fars
news agency.
"This is the first time that we are covering such large area", he
said.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Dec. 14 that closing the
strait was "not on the agenda," but hinted that the strait, a narrow
stretch along Iran's
gulf shore line, could be threatened if current rising tensions in the region
ever spilled over into war.
When asked Thursday if the strait will be closed as part of the impending naval
drill, Sayari said, according to the ISNA news agency: "the ability to do
so exists...whether to go ahead lays with the regime's top officials."
More than one-third of the world's tanker oil passes through the Strait of
Hormuz, making it a vital transit point. The U.S. maintains a naval presence in
the Gulf to ensure it remains open.
Sayari said the "newest Iranian missile torpedo system" and
"coordination between submarines and warships to confront piracy,
environmental threats and terrorism," would be featured in the new drill.
Tehran's navy is tasked with defending Iranian waters east of the Strait of
Hormuz, while the Islamic republic's elite Revolutionary Guards is in charge of
Iranian coast in the Gulf.
In recent years, both Iranian vessels and those of other nations have received
Iranian naval escorts through the pirate-infested waters off Somalia. Sayari
has previously said that Iran's
navy has escorted more than 1,300 ships and faced-off hundreds of armed clashes
with pirates.