Iran Announces Deployment of Two Warships to Bab-el-Mandeb Strait off Yemen's Coast

Despite ongoing conflicts in the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and recent attacks on an Emirati ship and an American destroyer, a news agency close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps reported that the 44th naval group of the Iranian army has been dispatched to the region. On Thursday, October 14, the Tasnim news agency announced that the 44th naval group, including the Alvand destroyer and the Bushehr support ship, is heading to the Gulf of Aden and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and will be present in the Gulf of Aden for some time. According to the report, this naval group was dispatched on October 5. Bab-el-Mandeb is a strait at the southern end of the Red Sea and is considered a strategically important waterway for international shipping. This strait is located on the coast of the Gulf of Aden. According to Tasnim news agency, this naval group will then head to international waters in the Indian Ocean and Tanzania, and if the weather permits, it will be dispatched to South Africa and the western coasts of this country in the Atlantic Ocean. Hussein Aryan, a military expert, told Radio Farda that the deployment of this naval group is primarily to continue patrolling in the Gulf of Aden and the Somali coast to combat piracy. After this, the naval group is expected to travel to Tanzania, and as Admiral Habibollah Sayyari stated, it will go to South Africa and the Atlantic Ocean if the weather is favorable. He added that if this visit occurs, it aligns with the strategic role assigned to the navy by Ayatollah Khamenei, the leader of Iran. This role is more symbolic than related to the navy's capabilities and Iran's national interests. The strategic mission assigned to the navy does not match its capabilities and the number of its ships. The deployment of this Iranian naval group to the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait comes at a time when Houthi rebels in Yemen attacked an Emirati cargo ship, which was chartered by the country's army, two weeks ago. Some American media outlets, such as Fox News, reported that the rockets fired at the Emirati ship were made in Iran, but Bahram Qasemi, the spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, denied this accusation. Following this attack, the U.S. Department of Defense (Pentagon) dispatched two destroyers along with the USS Ponce, which serves as a floating base for special operations, to the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. Meanwhile, the USS Mason destroyer was targeted by a missile fired from Yemen on Wednesday, October 21, in the northern part of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, which fell into the sea before reaching its target. While the Ansar Allah group, affiliated with the Houthis in Yemen, denied involvement in this attack, the Pentagon announced that in response to this attack, it had bombed three radar sites in areas controlled by the Houthis in Yemen. The Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia has been conducting operations against the Houthis and their allies in Yemen for about a year and a half, and with the support of this coalition, forces loyal to Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi managed to regain control of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait last fall. The deployment of the Iranian naval group to the Gulf of Aden comes after last year's deployment of the 34th naval group to the 'choke point' of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, during which the U.S. and Saudi Arabia warned about the possibility of Iranian warships stationed in the Gulf of Aden sending weapons to the Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen. In May of last year, international media reported that nine Iranian warships suspected of carrying weapons for the Houthis in Yemen returned to Iran after the presence of the U.S. naval fleet led by the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in the waters around Yemen. However, Habibollah Sayyari, the commander of the Iranian navy, denied these reports and stated that the presence of his forces in the Gulf of Aden was to 'protect the economic interests of the Islamic Republic' against pirates. Hussein Aryan also stated that the deployment of this naval group is not directly related to the Houthi missile attack on American ships and the U.S. response. The planning of such missions is usually done weeks before the deployment of the ships, and the deployment of the Alvand destroyer and the Bushehr support ship should not be seen as a reaction from Iran.