Despite Trump’s inflated statements about Iranian ships “destroyed and lying at the bottom”, the United States has not yet managed to completely open the Strait of Hormuz, which is controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).
It is also thanks to the so-called mosquito fleet they have hidden in bays, caves and tunnels along the southern coast, ready for action. A lot of boats have only basic equipment and light weapons. In April, Trump even let it be known that the United States did not attack “fast attack ships” because it “did not consider them a greater threat.”
On Thursday, Trump already admitted that “the big problem is that they are fast, but they only have a machine gun on the bow”. But some boats have more sophisticated equipment, such as short-range missiles. Here and there there are reports, such as on Monday, that the US Navy destroyed units of boats, but so far there is no evidence that the mosquito fleet has suffered major losses.
As the American server CNN writes, it is essentially a guerilla war on water, where local geographical conditions play into Iran’s favor, because all ships from the Persian Gulf must pass through the narrow throat of the Strait of Hormuz, there is no other alternative route.
The IRGC has been using these small boats since the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war. The fleet consists of either cheap, Iranian-made and easily replaceable boats, or more sophisticated models such as the Seraj-1, which is basically a copy of the legendary English racing model Bladerunner 51.
These small boats, with a minimal crew, or even unmanned boats, have the advantage of being low above the surface. So enemy radar systems will register them only when it is too late. The United States would thus have to deploy helicopters or drones to monitor the fleet’s mosquito ships.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards also use converted civilian boats and ships, such as traditional Arab dhows, for covert operations, such as laying mines.
According to Farzin Nadimi from the Washington Institute think tank, the IRGC has at its disposal 500 to 1,000 armed motorboats and another thousand drone ships, whether suicide drones or unmanned ships equipped with missiles and torpedoes.
