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In the Strait of Hormuz, Iran they have developed an unstoppable naval strategy that is impeding the movement of naval vessels. This “Hemostat” uses terrorist tactics, after the “traditional” Iranian ships were almost destroyed by US and Israeli attacks. No longer able to rely on private warships, Tehran is using an unofficial navy made up of several small ships equipped with missiles, machine guns, and drones. Fast and light, these “mosquito ships” can attack ships carrying tons of cargo.
In the middle of April, US President Donald Trump assured the public by writing on Truth Social that Iran’s hemostat ships did not cause serious problems for the US and Israel. “The Iranian Navy is at the bottom of the ocean, completely destroyed: 158 ships,” Trump wrote. “What we didn’t hit were their little numbers that they call ‘quick gunboats’ because we didn’t see them as a threat.” Less than 10 days later, on April 22, an Iranian attack by small ships resulted in the capture of two large ships off the coast. Hormuz Riverchanging the way of war.
Enter the Hemostat Fleet
“The Iranian fleet of small boats was developed during the The Iran-Iraq Warwith the aim of disrupting oil tankers in the Persian Gulf that contributed to the Iraq war,” said Michael Eisenstadt, an expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy where he is the director of the Military and Security Studies Program, who compares them to “the US torpedo boats that disrupted enemy shipping in the Pacific Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea during World War II.”
“The effectiveness of Iran’s small boats comes from their size and their use in public, which makes them difficult to deal with,” adds Eisenstadt. “Iran has more than a thousand small boats armed with rockets, machine guns, anti-ship missiles, and mines.” In this way, Tehran can pose a serious naval threat even if most of its military equipment is destroyed.
“As Iran showed in March, it can close the problem by launching a few drones against oil tankers and cargo ships in the Persian Gulf,” says Eisenstadt, who has also served as a US military analyst including a 26-year stint in the US Army as a field inspector, with missions in Iraq and Israel.
Between the number of ships it has and the thousands of support pilots, Iran has “more than it needs to force the closure of the strait,” says Eisenstadt. Then there is its proximity to the Strait of Hormuz, which allows Iran to put in place measures to block naval vessels and oil tankers. “Therefore it is important to see the Iranian threat as a multi-faceted one, combining different capabilities to exploit the strategic environment,” he adds.
Ways in the hands of the Pasdaran
Iran’s “regular” army is different from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, also known as the IRGC or Pasdaran. But similar regimes have allowed Tehran to create a doctrine of various terrorist groups, even in their own areas of operation.
Hemostat vessels are used by Pasdaran. As the Hudson Institute, a think tank, explains in a report written by the academician Can Kasapoglu, “many Iranian bases have been sunk or put out of action because of Iran’s military equipment,” Kasapoglu adds: “In contrast, the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guardians have their own military unit, which is designed mainly for fighting in the Stratact of Hormuz.”
