Iranian forces staged "a show of strength" in the Gulf yesterday with fighter-bombers and helicopters flying over a marine parade of 120 ships engaged in war games. Two of the Islamic republic's three Russian-built diesel submarines joined cruisers, destroyers and other navy and Revolutionary Guard ships in the parade before the Defence Minister, Rear-Adm Ali Shamkhani, aboard his command ship. The parade of vessels was named "A Show of Strength", and was accompanied by a flypast of about 40 fighter-bombers of the air force and army aviation corps helicopters, Iran's official news agency, IRNA said. Rear-Adm Ashkbous Danehkar, aboard the command warship, the Tunb, said the parade was to demonstrate Iran's naval power and supremacy.
Over the horizon, the US aircraft carrier, Nimitz, which passed through the Strait of Hormuz into the Gulf on Sunday with its battle group of six warships, conducted normal flight operations, a US Navy spokesman said.
The carrier battle group was ordered to hurry to the Gulf from the South China Sea ahead of schedule in response to an escalation of tension in the region.
"The American warships are the sole source of threats to the region," Rear-Adm Shamkhani said. He repeated an Iranian call for regional countries to co-operate towards a new security arrangement in the Gulf.
The six oil monarchies on the Arab side of the Gulf - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman - rely on the West for their defence. They recently rejected an Iranian offer of joint exercises and said they would continue to depend on the US, Britain and France.
Ships of all six Gulf Arab states are engaged in their own naval manoeuvres off the coast of Bahrain.
The Iranian defence minister said: "The Islamic Republic's defence doctrine is geared towards elimination of the sources of tension external to the region. We never consider our Muslim brothers in the Arab states as a threat to the Islamic Iran."
In Baghdad, Iraq laughed off the US military build-up in the Gulf and said it had better things to worry about than "acrobatic movements" by the United States. "This show of force is silly. It arouses laughter," the ruling Baath party newspaper said.
The increase in tension followed Iranian air raids on two Iraqi bases of the Mujahideen Khalq, an armed group of exiles opposed to Iran's government.
Washington has said the build-up was aimed at preventing Iraqi aircraft from violating a US-enforced "no-fly zone" over southern Iraq. The spokesman at the US Navy's Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain had no comment on a charge in Tehran that US ships were spying on the Iranian war games.
Iran News, an English-language daily which often reflects the view of the Iranian foreign ministry, said the deployment of the Nimitz in the Gulf had heightened tension in the region and increased the risk of a collision.