Iran Holds Caspian Naval Exercise

According to the Navy, the naval drill, codenamed ‘Sustainable Security-98’, involves various units and forces, including combat vessels, missile-launching corvettes, airplanes and choppers, as well as Navy commandoes.

The exercise is being held in an area of 25,800 nautical square miles across Iran’s territorial waters that make up 20 percent of the Caspian Sea.

The drill would include various offense and defense strategies for protecting Iranian territorial waters, ensuring security of the shipping routes, and boosting the combat capabilities of the Iranian naval forces.

The Army’s Air Defense and the Air Force are tasked with protecting security over the exercise zone.

Last year, the five Caspian littoral states (Iran, Russia, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and the Republic Azerbaijan) signed the Convention on the Caspian Sea Legal Regime.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has said that one of the very important achievements of the convention was security and stability in the Caspian Sea.

“Being explicitly stated that the Caspian Sea belongs only to the five littoral states and also stipulating that no foreign force and military vessel is able to be present in it and that maritime security is exclusive to the five littoral states, and also stressing the fact that the territories of none of the Caspian Sea region state can be used against another country means that the stability and security of the sea is important,” Rouhani said in August 2018.