BBC Tuesday, December 1, 1998 Published at 10:15 GMT

Iran begins war games

By Gulf Correspondent Frank Gardner

The five-day exercise, code-named "Vahdat" or

Unity 77, began on Monday and spans an area

from the central Gulf out into the Sea of Oman.

Amphibious operations, chemical warfare and

mock attacks on ships by divers using limpet

mines are just some of the skills being practised in

Iranian waters this week, according to Iran state

radio.

The manoeuvres began with a naval exercise

codenamed "Shahamat", meaning courage, which

tested Iran's ability to land troops from the sea.

A commander in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary

Guards Corps, Isa Galverdi, was quoted by the

official Iranian news agency, Irna, as saying the

manoeuvres involved a 160 warships and 120

aircraft.

Such exercises have been viewed in the past with

suspicion by both the US Navy and by Iran's Gulf

Arab neighbours.

But this week Iran announced that military

observers from Oman will attend the war games

following a bilateral defence agreement signed in

November.

Co-operation amongst the Islamic countries of the

Gulf is a theme which Iran has been recently

promoting.

A senior Iranian naval officer, Ali Akbar Ahmadian,

was quoted as saying the aim of Vahdat 77 is to

create mutual understanding among regional

countries.

During the time of the Shah in the 1970s, Iran was

acknowledged as the guarantor of security in the

Gulf.

But revolution and eight years of war with Iraq saw

Iran's military might largely replaced by the US

Navy, which currently has 15 warships in the

region.

Iran is now keen to reverse that process and

re-establish itself as the premier force in the Gulf.