A Turning-Point in Tehran-Moscow Military Relations’: Iran and Russia Shore Up Ties in Planned Naval Exercise
(Worthy News) – Russia and Iran moved to strengthen their military ties this week, ahead of a joint Russian-Iranian naval drill slated to take place between the Indian Ocean and contested strait of Hormuz over the next year.
Iranian Navy Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi was in Moscow Monday to sign a “memorandum of understanding” with the Russian ministry of defense, an agreement he called “the first…of its kind” and “a turning point in Tehran-Moscow military relations.”
“A coordination meeting will be held between the two sides in this regard,” Khanzadi said of the drill, which will see a joint Russian-Iranian military presence in Middle East waters for the first time, precedented only by exercises between the two countries held in the past in the Caspian sea near Europe.
The seizure of a British oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz by Iran on July 19th yielded a call by UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt for a European-led coalition to patrol the crucial waterway that Iran controls.
The US proposed a similar maritime security force in June after Iran blew holes in the hulls of two Saudi oil tankers and endangered a Norwegian tanker, damaging a Japanese vessel weeks later in a separate incident.