The Iranian Navy announced that the two ships now on anti-piracy assignments had docked Saturday for a port visit in Jeddah, on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast.
But state television proclaimed that the next morning the two ships were a thousand miles away in the Gulf of Aden where they foiled an attempt by 35 pirate boats to hijack an Iranian tanker.
The officer who regularly reports anti-piracy successes apparently failed to note that the two ships were no longer on their duty station in the Gulf of Aden and therefore unable to rumble with pirates.
The report that 35 pirate boats attacked the unnamed Iranian tanker also raised some eyebrows. No reports of such a massive pirate attack are known to have ever been made before. Usually the pirates use one to three skiffs to attack and board the ships they target.
The state television reports said the Iranian Navy rushed to the site after receiving a distress signal from the tanker, fired on the pirates and drove them off.
Iran announces every week or so that its two ships on anti-piracy patrol have rescued yet another Iranian vessel under attack. The rescued ships are never named, a curious omission.
Analysts say it is truly amazing that the Iranian Navy is always just a short distance away when Iranian ships come under attack. The problem the other navies in the region report is that they are usually too far away when a ship reports an attack to be able to drive off the pirates unless they have helicopters on board. But Iran always has a ship within hailing distance.
The Iranian Navy currently has the 1,135-ton corvette Admiral Naghdi, which Iran describes as a much larger destroyer, and the 33,000-ton supply ship Kharg on anti-piracy patrol—when they can come flying to the Gulf of Aden from Jeddah. The Naghdi was built in the United States and the Kharg in Britain and sold to Iran before the revolution. They have clearly gotten much faster with increasing age.