The Sting of the I.R.G.C. 'Mosquito Boats'

"The Islamic Republican Guard Corps navy works more like a guerrilla force at sea."

"It is focused on asymmetrical warfare, especially in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz."

"So instead of relying on big warships and classic naval battles, it depends on hit-and-run attacks."

Saeid Golkar, Guards expert, political science professor, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga

 

"When it is very bumpy, they [armed forces onboard] cannot shoot."

"[They are also ill-equipped to go head to head with a ​warship, and would likely suffer] very heavy casualties [​in any direct assault on one]."

"Even if they tried to saturate the ship’s defences by attacking from multiple directions, they would be extremely vulnerable to the air support that would be called in."

"It is going to be ​much harder to eliminate ⁠the small boat threat than it was to destroy Iran’s larger naval vessels, which were big targets that were relatively easy to find and track and, at most, only had a limited ability to defend themselves from air attack." 

Jeremy Binnie, Middle East specialist, defence intelligence company Janes 

The IRGC speed boats are fast, light, and easily replaceable. NurPhoto via Getty Images

It all began when recreational boats were mounted with rocket-propelled grenades or machine guns, when Iran first began using small boats that were fast, maneuverable, and deadly when patrolling the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. Those recreational craft underwent a  transformation when a range of specially designed small boats, along with miniature submarines and marine drones were built to the IRGC specifications, over the years. That 'mosquito fleet' of small boats has become a real and present threat in the Strait as a consequence of the U.S.-Israeli conflict in Iran.

 

The flotilla of small, fast boats whose purpose by the IRGC has been to harass local and international shipping through the Gulf, has turned now to threatening and firing upon global shipping in the Strait of Hormuz during the recent face-off between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic of Iran -- or what's left of it, aside from the IRGC. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is separate and apart from the regular Navy of Iran, which had been struck a cataclysmic blow in the opening days of the aerial bombardment. 

 

Over 90 percent of Iran's navy's fleet was destroyed, according to U.S. General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They all, including the country's major warships, were sunk and sit now on the ocean's bottom. At the same time, an estimated 50 percent of the fast attack boats belonging to the Guards were sunk. Estimates of the total number of these small ships prior to the U.S. sinking of the fleet ranged from hundreds to thousands. They are still not now in short supply. 

 

Arrival of new shipment of IRGC fastboats. Photo via Mehdi H

 

The size of the boats make them mostly invisible on satellite images from where they're moored alongside piers, where the  excavation of deep caves along the rocky coastline shelters them, prepared for deployment at a moment's notice. During the current conflict, at least 20 vessels were attacked by the 'mosquito fleet', according to the International Maritime Agency. Analysts consider the attacks to have been by drones fired from mobile launchers on land.

 

As for the small boat arsenal which poses a major threat to commercial shipping both in the Gulf and the Strait, "It remains a disruptive force. You never quite knew what they were up to and what their intentions were", commented Admiral Gary Roughead, retired chief of U.S. Naval Operations. "The IRGC navy has always believed that it is at the forefront of the confrontation with the Great Satan", added specialist on the Guards navy, Farzin Nadimi from the Washington Institute think tank.

 

According to experts, these small boats can reach speeds of over 100 knots. Larger, more sophisticated warships were also recently developed by the Guards, and they too were targeted when the U.S. bombardments focused on bombing Iran's naval fleet as well as its fleet of warplanes. The largest drone carrier, the Shahid Bagheri, a converted container ship able to launch anti-ship missiles, was also hit by U.S. air strikes.

 

It is the swarms of small boats that pose an ongoing threat to commercial vessels which have no defences against such attacks. U.S. warships, on the other hand, can counter a potential swam of small boats with their high-caliber cannons and additional weaponry.  

 

60 percent of IRGC fast boats still threaten shipping lanes: WSJ

 

Tension? What Tension?!

"[Iran will not negotiate with the United States.] Neither we, nor them [sic] is seeking war. They know that it is not to their benefit."
"Achieving 20 percent enrichment is the most difficult part. The next steps are easier than this step." 2019
"Should the Iranian nation beg for the right of exploitation of nuclear energy from the bullying world powers until they accept that the nation has a nuclear right?... No. This is not the way of a free and independent nation... Rights cannot be achieved by entreating. If you supplicate, withdraw and show flexibility, arrogant powers will make their threat more serious." 2007 
"Today, America poses a threat to peace and security in the world. Therefore, the slogan 'Death to America' is no longer used only by our people. Today, you see throughout the world people setting fire to the effigy of the American president and chanting the slogan 'Death to America'. This is because of the American regime's exaggerated demands, its arrogance, its vanity, and its desire to control, and because it is a pawn in the hands of the Zionists." 2006
"Israel Is A Hideous Entity In the Middle East Which Will Undoubtedly Be Annihilated." 2010
"There are documents showing close collaboration of the Zionists with the Nazi Germany, and exaggerated numbers relating to the Jewish holocaust were fabricated to solicit sympathy of the world public opinion, lay the ground for the occupation of Palestine and to justify the atrocities of the Zionists. There is even evidence on hand that a large number of non-Jewish hooligans and thugs of Eastern Europe were forced to migrate to Palestine as Jews. The purpose was to install in the heart of the Islamic world an anti-Islamic state under the guise of supporting the victims of racism and to create a rift between the East and the West of the Islamic world after 1400 years of unity between those two parts." 2001
"Iran's stance has always been clear on this ugly phenomenon [Israel]. We have repeatedly said that this cancerous tumor of a state should be removed from the region… No one will allow a bunch of thugs, lechers and outcasts from London, America and Moscow to rule over the Palestinians." 2000
Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Islamic Republic of Iran

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waves his hand, as he delivers a speech on the first day of Persian New Year, also known as Nowruz in Mashhad, northeast of Tehran, Iran March 21, 2019. Khamenei.ir/Handout via REUTERS

"Olmert hadn't asked for a green light and I hadn't given one. He had done what he believed was necessary to protect Israel."
President George W. Bush, 2008

"Our stance against Israel is the same stance we have always taken. #Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated; it is possible and it will happen. 7/31/91#GreatReturnMarch."
Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei  2018

Iran has been acting out again. Its leader states "no one is seeking war", while he warns in the next breath that the Islamic Republic will easily enrich uranium to weapons-grade quality, even as tensions rise. All non-essential non-emergency U.S. government staff has been alerted they must leave Iraq immediately. Houthi rebels in Yemen launched a drone strike on a critical oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia at the behest of the Republic, while Hezbollah is thought to be responsible for sabotaging oil tankers off the coast of the United Arab Emirates.

A US Air Force B-52H Stratofortress aircraft assigned to the 20th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron takes off from Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, May 12, 2019. (Staff Sgt. Ashley Gardner, US Air Force via AP)

An aircraft carrier strike group and B-52 bombers were dispatched by Washington into the region even as Khamenei affirms yet again that he has no intention of conducting any negotiations with the United States, since such efforts as diplomacy represent "poison". If no new nuclear deal arises to take the place of the one that the U.S. has pulled out of, threatens Tehran, they are poised to enrich uranium beyond the level the deal permits, within a period of four days' the 20 percent threshold for weapons-grade uranium.

"An aircraft carrier that has at least 40 to 50 planes on it and 6,000 forces gathered within it was a serious threat for us in the past but now it is a target and the threats have switched to opportunities."
"If [the Americans] make a move, we will hit them in the head."Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander, Aerospace Division, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

In this Thursday, May 9, 2019 photo released by the US Navy, the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln transits the Suez Canal in Egypt. (Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Dan Snow, US Navy via AP)

The step following that, warns Khamenei is 'easy', the production of nuclear arms, and the fitting of a nuclear tip to those ballistic missiles the Republic has been busy perfecting for range and accuracy, recalling the sneering promise that one well-aimed ICBM would wipe Israel off the face of the Middle East. Israel takes these statements as seriously as they are meant to be received. It, after all, as the junior Satan, is within easy reach of Iran's missile trajectory, whereas its reach to the U.S. coast is a trifle more demanding.

But Israel also has experience in demolishing the nuclear plans of its geographic-co-located enemies, implacable in their determination to exterminate the Jewish state. Syria's nuclear reactor which its collaboration with North Korea made possible at Deir al-Zour was months from activation, in 2007, recognized as an imminent threat to Israel's existence in its very backyard, prompting then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak to authorize a destructive attack decommissioning the reactor before it could be activated, targeting it with Israeli F-15 and F-16 fighter jets.

A like fate awaited Iraq's nuclear reactor, earlier in 1981. Israel has a track record of defending itself against impossible odds. It is the only nation on Earth to have destroyed two nations' nuclear reactors with precision strikes and the use of specific military force in the face of an existential threat. The country recognizes that if one of its enemies demonstrates the potential to use a nuclear weapon against it, it must act in its own defence for no one else ever will. Now, in facing that same threat from Iran, Israel fully understands the added complexity of Iran's underground facilities protected from conventional air strikes.

In this September 24, 2017 file photo, surface-to-surface missiles and a portrait of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are displayed by the Revolutionary Guard. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Even so, there is confidence within the Israeli military that the Israeli air force is capable of causing sufficient damage to those threatening facilities built into the side of a mountain as well as the others built with massively credible reinforcement to withstand conventional air strikes, to enable an Israeli strike force to visit critical disabling damage to the nuclear program the Republic is so proud of achieving representing a lethal threat to the entire Arab community of Sunni nations by Shi'ite Iran.

The U.S. has the time and the distance in its favour to withhold taking pre-emptive strikes against a hostile, theistic terror-state, but Israel does not have that luxury, vulnerable as it is to a surprise attack from a near-abroad enemy state which has openly boasted time and again of its intentions to destroy the "Zionist entity". Iran plans to "eradicate" Israel in its entirety in keeping with its Islamist ideology.

Israel plans to destroy the lethal components of destructive capacity; a world of difference from two different world orders.

A view of the nuclear enrichment plant of Natanz in central Iran. Photograph: EPA