Iranian Naval Exercise to Cement Russian and Chinese Support Concludes

The annual Iranian-hosted Exercise Maritime Security Belt with the participation of Russian and Chinese ships got underway on March 11 concluded on March 15. The exercise took place in the waters off Chahbahar on Iran’s eastern border with Pakistan. This was the seventh iteration of the exercise.

The exercise featured three phases of activity: an assembly and preparation phase, a maritime drill phase and a harbor summary lessons-learned phase, concluding with the customary fleet review. The overnight maritime phase – which will have been a boon to Iranian sailors fasting for Ramadan – included practicing offensive actions against maritime targets, visit/board/search and seizure operations, damage control procedures, and joint search and rescue drills.

Given the sea time needed to assemble the participating fleet, with the Chinese deploying from Djibouti and the Russians from Vladivostok, the active part of the exercise was extremely short, almost symbolic in character, emphasizing that the exercise had greater political significance this year than in previous years.

Sensing pressure from the new Trump administration, Iran has been seeking to strengthen its defense alliances, in the hope that they will provide some restraint to direct action against Iran’s nuclear weapons development programmer and ballistic missile capability. Both these capabilities were damaged by recent Israeli direct action, but remain largely intact and extant as a threat, with senior Iranian officers promising that Exercise True Promise-3, the next attack on Israel, will go ahead and has been scheduled.

There will also be fears in Iran that both Russia and China may have much more to gain by doing deals with the Trump administration, rather than persisting with support for Iran – which in overall terms could be seen as a cost rather than a benefit. Russia benefits – particularly while the Ukraine war continues – from Iranian shipments of missiles