July 25, 2026: Currently, the Iranian Navy has about 90 ships. Not all of them are operational, and more are facing destruction or debilitating damage every day. Before the war the Iranian Navy benefited from improvements over the last five years. These included adding a few more submarines and surface warships. This year, that all changed as 13 of 18 submarines were destroyed, all eight corvettes and frigates were sunk, as were most of the 46 patrol boats and 41 amphibious and logistics ships and 28 aircraft. Then there are the IRGC/Islamic Republican Guard Corps and their force of 40 missile and torpedo boats as well as over a thousand speed boats that can carry machine guns, shoulder-fired anti-ship or aircraft rockets. These boats can also carry naval mines, which are currently a problem in the Persian Gulf. The Iran War included efforts to sink all of the IRGC speedboats, but that proved difficult as the Iranians concealed many of these boats or stored them far from the coast and brought them to the coast as needed.

The Iranian Navy has long been a work in progress. Five years ago, the Iranian Navy put the fourth Moudge\Mowj class frigate, the Dena, into service. The latest of these ships was the Dena, described as a Light Frigate. It was sunk on March 4, 2026, by the USS Charlotte, an American nuclear attack submarine. The Moudge-class ships are actually heavily armed, haphazardly equipped corvettes. Iran plans to put seven into service, and three more are under construction, with uncertain service dates due to difficulty finding the required warship components.

The first Moudge, the Jamaran, entered service in 2010 after at least six years under construction. The second one, the Damavand, entered service in 2015. This one was built in a Caspian Sea shipyard and took six years to complete. In early 2018, it ran aground while entering port in bad weather. Satellite photos showed it partially submerged. The ship was refloated and towed to a shipyard for repairs, where it was declared complete after 18 months. Despite this, the ship is not yet back in service. This may be due to problems with equipment damaged when the ship was partially sunk. Getting necessary electronic and mechanical components is always a problem when building these ships. For example, the third Moudge, the Sahand, entered service at the end of 2018 after eight years of construction efforts. This one was more heavily armed and equipped for long-distance voyages of up to 150 days if accompanied by a supply ship. To demonstrate this, Sahand recently traveled to the Atlantic, accompanied by a tanker/supply ship. This was mostly a publicity stunt.

It is unclear how long the latest Moudge was under construction because Iran carries out much of the work in a shed to protect the new warship from the elements for five or more years. Iran is now trying to keep quiet about its warship construction efforts due to unpredictable delays.

Iran has had limited access to foreign shipbuilders since the 1980s and, by 2000, had developed the capability to build its own warships. These are crude, but they float, and their weapons generally work. Construction takes place in the commercial shipyards that Iran has developed since the 1990s to repair existing commercial ships and build smaller tankers and cargo carriers. This eventually led to the development of warships, a common trend among nations seeking to build their own. Before the monarchy was overthrown in 1979, Iran bought modern warships from foreign suppliers, a practice still common among Persian Gulf oil states. Only the UAE has developed some warship construction capability, mainly as part of its effort to prepare the economy for less dependence on oil income.

The locally built Iranian surface ships are small craft, 1,500-ton corvettes and 2,200-ton frigates, while the submarines are largely of the miniature variety. Construction of warships is a sideline in the commercial shipyards, and only a few warships are being built at a time. Construction is also proceeding slowly so that, apparently, mistakes in the previous ships can be discovered and fixed.

Currently, the only major surface warships it has are three of the new corvettes/frigates, three elderly 1,540-ton British-built frigates, and two American-built 1,100-ton corvettes. There are about fifty smaller patrol craft, ten of them armed with Iranian versions of Chinese anti-ship missiles. Chief among these is the Nasr 1. There are a few dozen mine warfare, amphibious, and support ships. The three most powerful ships in the fleet are three Russian Kilo-class subs. Most of the foreign-built ships are serving way past their retirement date. This includes the Kilos and most of the 50 mini-subs, most of which were built in Iran. There are several thousand marines and twenty or so aircraft and helicopters.

The Iranian Navy is led by officers who think along more conventional lines than their government. Western ship commanders generally have good professional relationships with their Iranian counterparts, even when the Iranian Navy is under orders to give Western ships a hard time. If an Iranian captain reports by radio that He Has His Orders, it means he will follow through on whatever bizarre actions he has been ordered to carry out but will be apologetic to his foreign peers.

The Iranian Navy has fewer options than the Revolutionary Guard simply because it has fewer, larger ships that are easier to spot and hit. Since 2005, the navy has generally been stationed in the Indian Ocean and the Caspian Sea, while the IRGC/Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps navy has been responsible for the Persian Gulf and for protecting Iranian oil facilities along the coast. Actually, the Revolutionary Guard is there more as a threat to Arab oil fields and tankers because the Arabs and their Western allies have control of the air and can destroy Iranian oil fields and tankers that way. What the IRGC hopes to do at sea is create as formidable a threat as possible, even if this threat, in the form of suicidal speedboats and missile boats backed up by shore-based anti-ship missiles, is short-term. In the long run, any Iranian naval power is toast.

In Iran, the IRGC has its own Navy of the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution. The main job of the IRGC is to protect the religious dictatorship from the Iranian armed forces and a growing number of angry Iranians. As a result, the IRGC Navy has 23,000 personnel, including marines and naval aviation personnel, compared to 18,000 in the Iranian Navy. Iran’s two navies are very different from each other. The traditional navy exists alongside the less well-equipped, but more fanatical, forces of the IRGC. Both forces are equipped, trained, and led very differently. The IRGC force is sworn to defend the religious dictatorship, while the regular navy strives to defend Iran.