Iran's IRGC rolls out new missiles, naval supply ships

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is increasing its naval power, according to Iranian reports. Images of newly equipped fast boats, as well as a new support ship, were broadcast on Thursday morning.

The IRGC, which runs its own branch of Iran’s navy, will receive almost 100 new patrol boats and a large “ocean liner”-style support ship, which was converted for naval needs, the reports said. This expands Iran’s ability to threaten countries in the Gulf and project power at sea.

Iran basically has two navies – an official one and one under the IRGC. Iran has been trying to expand its relatively small naval power in recent years, even sending ships on long-distance voyages to Russia and South America.

Iran's maritime capabilities

The reports about Iran’s new missile-capable and drone-launch-capable missile boats goes back to at least 2020, when Naval Post reported that Iran had received 112 missile-launching boats. Iran produced several classes of these boats, including the Ashura, Taregh and Zulifqar classes. The Ashura is a 6.7-meter-long speedboat with two outboard engines. It can carry about a dozen men and is driven with a center console. The Zulfiqar is about 13 meters long. The Taregh, or Tariq, is roughly the same size, and these types have been used since the 1980s.

Last year, reports said Iran was carrying out work on the “Shahid Mahdavi ocean liner,” which would give the IRGC the ability to carry out long-distance missions. This ship is supposed to be a floating base and is not actually an ocean liner, but rather the conversion of a cargo ship that Iran International says was originally called Sarvin.

“They are looking beyond the Persian Gulf and into the blue waters of the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea and the northern Indian Ocean,” Farzin Nadimi, an associate fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who studies the Iranian military, told AP at the time. Baird Maritime also reported that this was a “containership being rebuilt into drone aircraft carrier” for the IRGC.

Rear Admiral Alireza Tangsiri, commander of the Navy of the IRGC, made comments in a ceremony in Bandar Abbas “held to mark the joining of Ashura- and Tariq-class [boats] and the Shahid Mahdavi warship, which is equipped with offensive and defensive systems, to the IRGC Navy’s combat forces,” Iran’s Mehr News reported this week.

Tangsiri said the Ashura- and Tariq-class vessels have been converted into boats with missiles with a range of 10 to 180 kilometers,” the report said. “Iran is also rolling out the larger logistic vessel, perhaps one of at least two that will be built to carry helicopters and drones. He gave some specifics on the Mahdavi, noting that it was 2,100 tons, 240 meters long and 27 meters wide, with a radar array and surface-to-surface, surface-to-air missiles, highly advanced electronic warfare Khordad 3 integrated telecommunication [air-defense] systems and has the capability of carrying helicopters, UAVs and operational vessels.”

The Iranian reports of the newly equipped ships come while Iran continues to send weapons to the Houthis in Yemen. The US and UK navies have interdicted some of these shipments.

Iran has also carried out two attempted drone attacks on commercial ships in the last several months, part of a pattern of Iranian attacks on shipping in the region.