TEHRAN – The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) is working to build a unique aircraft carrier with no par in the world, a senior IRGC commander announced late on Thursday.

Alireza Tangsiri, who is the chief of the IRGC Navy, said the aircraft in question will be developed by Iran for the first time in the world. “In the future, we will see an aircraft carrier that does not exist in the world,” he said, according to Iranian media. “This carrier has both the ability to carry aircraft and the ability to carry a number of missile-launching boats inside it, which has no equivalent in the world.”

According to General Tangsiri, the Shahid Mahdavi and Shahid Rodaki vessels are a successful experience of entering this field and building vessels to improve the ability to sail for a long time, and “you will see newer generations of vessels with more capabilities in the future”.

He said, “The IRGC Navy was formed with a set of rocket-launching boats, but today it is equipped with a variety of equipment in the field of missiles, buoyancy, drones, etc., all of which are domestically manufactured. Every day, the process of upgrading this equipment is being followed more carefully, so that the IRGC Navy's rocket-launching vessels are now equipped with precision-guided missiles.”

General Aziz Nasirzadeh, deputy chairman of the chiefs of staff of the Iranian armed forces, announced on Wednesday that plans are afoot to hold joint military exercises between the Army and the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps.

He said the IRGC and the Army are not separated entities. “Each of these two forces performs different assigned missions and we have passed the issue that a person is a member of the IRGC, the army or a member of another corps.” 

The brigadier general added, “The policies of the chiefs of staff of the armed forces are on the same lines, and the commanders of the Army and the IRGC also follow the same line. In fact, there is a strong alliance between the armed forces. And the Army and the IRGC are a divine army that operates under the banner of the Leader of the Revolution.”

He considered the unity of the armed forces as the reason for the strength of Iran’s deterrence power.

“We have seen that guests from both sides participated in Army or IRGC exercises, but the plan is based on planning and defining exercises jointly with the presence of the Army and the IRGC. This will be done in the future with the participation of units from both sides. Of course, we witnessed that in the joint exercise that was conducted with the presence of Iran, Russia and China, our navy was composed of the Army and the IRGC,” he continued. 

During coordinated naval exercises in the northern Indian Ocean, the armed forces of Iran, China, and Russia have conducted a variety of tactics and operations, including rescuing hijacked vessels.

In March, the Iranian, Chinese, and Russian navies participated in the major stage of the 2023 Maritime Security Belt naval drills in the northern Indian Ocean.