In recent months there have been several close encounters between the US Navy and Iranian Navy vessels in the Gulf. These tense encounters point to the need for Iran and the United States to agree to rules of behaviour to avoid miscalculations and escalations. An agreement could be similar to the Incidents at Sea Agreement signed […]
Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Naval
* Moderator’s Note: This post appeared originally in the Letters to the Editor section of The Washington Times on 30 March 2007. It is no longer available on-line. A large part of Canadian naval history is traced back to that of the Royal Navy. The history of that organization is […]
A report in The Australian published on 8 December describes ‘a purge’ of the Royal Navy’s senior leadership over the embarrassment caused by the ‘fiasco’ when 15 sailors and marines were captured by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards on 23 March 2008. Defence writer Michael Smith described the event and its […]
On reading reports and scanning the video of the recent U.S. Navy - Iranian Revolutionary Guard incident in the Straits of Hormuz I was struck by how restrained the American forces were and how rash the Iranian. The Revolutionary Guards broadcast their hostile intent on the radio, manoeuvered to deploy […]
Controversy has broken out in the media, particularly in the U.K. and the U.S., over the behaviour, while captive, of the British naval personnel who were recently seized by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and subsequently detained by Iran's governing authorities. Their effusive expressions of thanks to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad […]
Today's Navy Times (28 March) has an article that reports 'swarming tactics' were used by Iranian forces when they captured fifteen Royal Navy and Royal Marines personnel on Friday. Their use of this tactic should come as no surprise, and yet that appears to have been exactly the case. In […]