The Navy said the Tonb and the Delvar spent 44 days on duty in the Gulf of Aden foiling attempted hijacks by Somali pirates. That was a very short deployment; the brevity was not explained. Most Iranian deployments have been around 60 days. Distant deployments by the US Navy, like those in the Persian Gulf, are routinely for at least six months.
Rear Admiral Ebrahim Ashkan welcomed the returning sailors Saturday and lauded their work. Both PressTV and the Fars news agency said he praised them for covering 1,215 nautical miles on their 44-day mission. But 1,215 nautical miles would not take the ships to the Gulf of Aden in back. In fact, the ships wouldn’t even reach the western end of Oman before they would have had to turn around and return.
The day after the Tonb and Delvar returned to port, the Navy dispatched the Bandar Abbas and Shahid Naqdi for duty in the Gulf of Aden. Oddly, Iran has been deploying a new pair of ships after the previous one returned. Normally, navies send the replacement ships out to a duty and only then have the previous ships return. That way, there is no gap in coverage. The way the Iranian Navy is handling it, there is always a gap in coverage between deployments.
