Few countries on earth can claim to have a navy with a longer history than that of Iran, whose heritage dates back to the First Persian Empire of 500BC.
One wonders what that era’s great and terrible warriors would think about the state of the Iranian navy now.
Four days into the United States-Israeli war on Iran, the Islamic Republic’s naval headquarters is in ruins, one of its elite admirals is dead and its finest warships are ablaze in the Gulf of Oman, home to its southern fleet.
Donald Trump has made the annihilation of the Iranian navy a key goal of his campaign, with the US boasting on Monday that all 11 of Iran’s vessels stationed in the Gulf of Oman have been destroyed.
US forces have also mostly destroyed the headquarters of the Iranian naval fleet in the port of Bandar Abbas, while Ali Shamkhani, an admiral in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has been killed in an Israeli air strike.
