Iran inducts new boats for ensuring security of ships passing through Persian Gulf

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has inducted new, mostly small but faster boats, for the security of ships passing through the Persian Gulf. The boats were displayed at Bandar Abbas, Iran. 

Reportedly, the boats are equipped with multiple rockets, light anti-ship missiles and lightweight torpedoes. The boats received include a design from the UK called ‘bladerunner’ that has been repurposed by Iran. There is also a Taedong-B, North Korean submersible boat. North Korea and Iran have cooperated in the past on missile technology. There are also C-14 “China cat” missile boats which Iran has been using for many years.  

Of particular interest is the fact that Iran has now mounted drones on some of the boats. These drones are termed ‘Ababil’. Fars News didn’t mention the drones but video and still images show these mounted atop several vessels. Fars News quoted, “The speedboats are capable of carrying and firing various missiles and rockets and supporting diving operations joined by IRGC Naval Combat Organization in Bandar Abbas. The light, fast and offensive speedboats which were built in the centers affiliated to the IRGC Navy and in cooperation with the Defense Ministry will be ready for missions and operations in Persian Gulf, Sea of Oman and Caspian Sea.” 

Drones were first mounted on Iranian IRGC boats in 2020. According to reports at the time, some 70 Ababil-2 kamikaze drones were put on the IRGC vessels. It is not clear how well they work. However, the addition of the drones is aimed at providing additional security to ships passing through Persian Gulf. However, the US has termed these boats threat for its naval ships present in the region and former US President Donald Trump even threatened to sink IRGC boats.  

Iran drills 117 oil and gas wells in first 10 months of current calendar year

National Iranian Drilling Company (NIDC) has completed drilling of 117 oil and gas wells during the first nine months of the current Iranian calendar year. Managing Director of the company, Abdollah Mousavi said the drilled wells consisted of 27 development wells, one appraisal well, 85 workover wells and four exploratory wells.

The official stated that during this period, 18 wells were drilled 326 days earlier than the schedule and handed over to the applicant company for operation, adding that the early production of the wells, rig clearance, and cost reduction, which are resulted through cooperation between the experts of NIDC and the operating company, is economically viable significantly.

After the US re-imposed sanctions on Iran, indigenizing the know-how for the manufacturing of the parts and equipment applied in different industrial sectors is one of the major strategies that the Islamic Republic has been strongly following up to reach self-reliance and nullify the sanctions.

Oil, gas and petrochemical industries have achieved outstanding performances due to indigenizing of the knowledge for manufacturing many parts and equipment that were previously imported. Among different sectors of the mentioned industries, drilling could be mentioned as a prominent example in this regard.

NIDC managed to indigenize the knowledge for manufacturing 6,000 drilling equipment in collaboration with domestic manufacturers and engineers in the previous Iranian calendar year.

Before this success, the technology for manufacturing the mentioned equipment was in the possession of a handful of foreign companies.

The equipment indigenized by NIDC includes drilling mud pumps, blowout preventers, traction motors, draw-works, drilling fluid recycling systems, mission centrifugal pumps, top drives, and drilling rig slow circulation rate pressure systems.

The company has also managed to indigenize the know-how for manufacturing 242 parts highly-applied in the drilling industry during the first half of the current Iranian calendar year.

In order to indigenize the technology to manufacture these parts, NIDC inked six research deals with domestic universities and knowledge-based companies.

At the beginning of the current Iranian year, NIDC managing director had said that his company’s performance will be more outstanding in this year, which is named the year of surge in production.

The official’s saying has already come true, as his company managed to indigenize the know-how for manufacturing some significant parts, and also in completing the digging operations sooner than the schedule.

NIDC accounts for a major part of drilling exploration as well as appraisal/development wells in Iran. It holds 70 onshore and offshore drilling rigs as well as equipment and facilities for offering integrated technical and engineering services.

Will Biden withdraw US recognition of Israeli sovereignty over Golan?

The Golan Heights will always be part of Israel; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken walked back the Trump administration’s recognition of the Golan Heights as part of Israel.

“The Golan was and will remain part of Israel,” Netanyahu said while visiting a health clinic in Zarzir, near Nazareth. “With an agreement, without an agreement, we are not coming down from the Golan. It will remain a sovereign part of the State of Israel.”

It may be recalled that Blinken in an interview on CNN on Monday night said “As a practical matter, the control of the Golan in that situation I think remains of real importance to Israel’s security.”

“Legal questions are something else, and over time if the situation were to change in Syria, that’s something we look at, but we are nowhere near that,” he stated.

Blinken added that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government, as well as the presence of militia groups backed by Iran; pose a “significant security threat” to Israel.

US President Joe Biden’s advisers had said previously that he would not withdraw US recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan.

Former US president Donald Trump officially granted US recognition of the Golan as Israeli territory in 2019, a dramatic shift from decades of US policy.

Israel gained control of the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 during Six-Day War, and applied its laws to the area in 1981. No country other than the US has recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan.

Right-wing parties running in the Knesset election in March said Blinken’s statement would not deter them from developing the Golan Heights.

New Hope leader Gideon Sa’ar tweeted that Israel, under former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, applied its sovereignty to the Golan Heights 40 years ago.

“The Golan will always be an inseparable part of Israel,” Sa’ar wrote. “A government led by me will strengthen and grow our settlement in the Golan Heights.”

Yamina responded that “the future of our land will be decided by Israel’s actions and not by words.

“An Israeli government led by Naftali Bennett will act to strengthen our hold on the Golan Heights, Samaria, the [Jordan] Valley and Judea and the rest of the land,” the party stated.

The Religious Zionist Party led by MK Bezalel Smotrich used Blinken’s statement as an opportunity to attack New Hope and Yamina for not unequivocally endorsing Netanyahu.

“Whoever thinks that they can put their values aside even at the price of joining a left-wing government will find himself fighting not only for the recognition of the Golan Heights but against towns being evacuated,” the party said.

In the same interview, Blinken reiterated past comments that “if Iran returns to compliance with those obligations in the nuclear agreement, we would do the same thing, and then we would work with our allies and partners to try and build a longer and stronger agreement, and also bring in some of these other issues, like Iran’s missile program, like its destabilizing actions in the region, that need to be addressed as well.”

“The problem we face now,” he said, “is that in recent months, Iran has lifted one restraint after another… And the result is they are closer than they’ve been to having the capacity on short order to produce the solid material for a nuclear weapon.”

Blinken criticized the Trump administration’s decision to leave the Iran deal in 2018.

As for how the Biden White House viewed the previous administration’s efforts to broker peace in the region, Blinken said “We applaud the Abraham Accords.”

“This is an important step forward,” he continued. “Whenever we see Israel and its neighbors normalizing relations, improving relations, that’s good for Israel, it’s good for the other countries in question, it’s good for overall peace and security and I think it offers new prospects to people throughout the region through travel, through trade, through other work that they can do together to actually, materially, improve their lives, and that’s a good thing.”

But he added, “That doesn’t mean that the challenges of the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians go away. They don’t. They’re still there and they’re not going to miraculously disappear. So we need to engage on that, but in the first instance, the parties in question need to engage on that.”

Blinken posited that a final resolution between Israel and the Palestinians and the creation of a Palestinian state will not happen soon, but the Biden administration would try to ensure that neither side took unilateral actions to make peace more challenging.

“Hopefully, we’ll see both sides take steps to create a better environment in which actual negotiations can take place,” he said.

Whether he regards Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Blinken replied: “I do, yes. And, more importantly, we do.”

When pressed, Blinken would not commit whether the Biden administration would recognize a potential Palestinian capital in east Jerusalem, opting instead to say that an issue of this sort should be negotiated by the involved parties.

Israel unveils new WASP surveillance system

According to a report published in The Jerusalem Post, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has unveiled its new WASP surveillance system on Monday. The new system provides a high-resolution situational awareness picture of moving targets day and night and within a wide area of interest.

 “Utilizing state-of-the-art EO (Earth observation) and (infrared) IR sensors, AI (artificial intelligence) algorithms and adaptive rule engines, the system captures large areas in high revisit rate, to track, identify and alert the system operator of moving targets that correlate with mission requirements and objectives," the IAI said in a statement.

"Compact, light-weight and requiring low power consumption, WASP complies with a wide range of aerial platforms such as tactical UAVs, drones, fixed and rotary-wing aircraft, or tethered surveillance balloons.”

Mounted on a tactical UAV, such as the BirdEye 650D, WASP covers two square kilometers in optimal resolution to detect all types of moving targets. When mounted on a male UAV such as the Heron 1, the coverage area expands over 15 square kilometers to detect mostly vehicle size objects and the like, the company said.

“The development of WASP exemplifies IAI’s novel strategy of ISR systems development, intelligence and information fusion capabilities," said Moshe Levy, IAI Executive Vice President and General Manager, Military Aircraft Group.

"By providing a highly detailed intelligence picture in a wide area, WASP provides excellent two-layer situational awareness that comprises both visual and intelligence information," he said. "As a compact and light system, it can be mounted on a range of platforms to provide strong intelligence capabilities already on the tactical level.”