BEIRUT: Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards staged war games in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, including a gunboat attack on a model US warship, in Tehran’s latest display of military muscle in a Gulf shipping channel vital to world oil exports.
A ceremony marking the exercises was attended by commanders of the Guards, an influential military force led by anti-Western hawks, as well as by Parliament speaker Ali Larijani.
“With attention to the situation in the region, we have noticeably expanded the defense budget of the armed forces to ensure the stable security of the region,” Larijani told a news conference before the exercises, according to Fars News.
State TV footage showed a number of gunboats swarming a huge model warship and blasting it with missiles.
The “maquette of an American aircraft carrier” was built to scale and targeted with cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, according to Fars News, which is linked to the Revolutionary Guard.
The gunboats also carried out an exercise in laying mines, according to the Iranian Students’ News Agency.
At one point a camera from state TV panned across a banner which read “If the Americans are ready to be buried at the bottom of the waters of the Gulf — so be it,” a quote from Iran’s first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Separately, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, as decision time looms for a nuclear deal with world powers, sought Wednesday to win the support of the religious community at the “backbone” of the Islamic republic.
“For the government and the people of Iran, Qom is not a city, but the symbol of religious life,” Rouhani said in a speech in the city of Qom.
Iran war games: Boats destroy mock-up US ship
Iran war games: Boats destroy mock-up US ship
