it has continued announcing that it has stopped attacks on Iranian ships by Somali pirates at the rate of one a week.
The Iranian Navy announced July 5 that its 14th “fleet” of anti-piracy ships had returned home—the surface ships Bandar Abbas and Shahid Naqdi and the submarine Yunes.
It did not, however, make the usual announcement that a 15th fleet had left port for the Gulf of Aden to continue anti-piracy patrols. Only on August 28 did PressTV report that Navy Commander Habibollah Sayyari had announced the 15th fleet would soon leave for the Gulf of Aden.
Despite that two-month gap in deployments, there has been no gap in claims by the Navy that Iranian ships have been regularly foiling Somali pirates. The announcements have been issued at the rate of one per week for the actions of a ghost fleet operating in July and August between the return of the 14th fleet on July 5 and the soon-to-be-dispatched 15th fleet.
Just last week, the Navy said it had engaged in a dramatic running sea battle with 12 pirate boats that had attacked an unnamed Iranian ship three times—first, in the Bab el-Mandeb strait leaving the Red Sea, then in the Gulf of Aden and finally in the Arabian Sea.
The Navy says it has been dispatching ships on anti-piracy duty since November 2008. It did announce on December 22, 2008, that it had sent ships to patrol off Somalia. But no ships were ever sighted by other navies. Then on May 16, 2009, it announced it had sent the ships Alborz and Bushehr as the “first fleet” to patrol off Somalia. It said they would remain on station five months, but they returned after 60 days.
Since then, the Navy has announced every other month the return of one “fleet” and the dispatch of another until July 5 when the return of the 14th fleet was announced and no mention was made of a 15th fleet until Tuesday, August 30.