Iran holds joint military drill near strategic Strait of Hormuz
Commandos and airborne infantry would participate in the wargames, dubbed “Zolfaghar-1401,” along with drones, fighter jets, helicopters, military transport aircraft and submarines.
The strait is located at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and is crucial to global energy supplies, with about a fifth of all oil traded at sea passing through it.
Iran has held joint naval, air, and ground exercises in the Gulf near the strategic Strait of Hormuz waterway, state media reported.
The drills involve submarines and drones "practicing information-gathering operations against attacking forces, as well as reconnaissance operations,” Admiral Habibollah Sayyari told the official IRNA news agency on Friday.
The exercises, code-named Zolfaghar-1401, were launched overnight Friday on the eastern side of the strait in the Gulf of Oman.
Tehran, which opposes the presence of US and Western navies in the area, holds annual war games in the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for some 30 percent of all crude oil traded by sea.
Sayyari said foreign forces must leave the area "so that regional countries can establish stability and peace in their neighbourhood," the English-language state-run Press TV reported.
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