IRAN is planning to send a blunt message to its enemies today, when thousands of troops are due to take part in a week-long military excercise stretching the length of the Gulf.

According to Rear-Admiral Mostafa Safari, the naval commander of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, about 17,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen will mount co-ordinated manoeuvres from the northern Gulf to the Sea of Oman. “We will gain the necessary and needed readiness to reply decisively to any kind of threat,” he told state television. The operation appeared to be a warning to America that any use of military force to attack Iran’s nuclear programme will trigger a response in the Gulf, the conduit of much of the world’s energy supplies.

Rear-Admiral Muhammad Ibrahim Dehghan, the spokesman for the operation, said that the focus of the excercise would be the strategic Strait of Hormuz, at the mouth of the Gulf: “If the enemy wants to make the area insecure, he should rest assured that he will also suffer from the insecurity, since we know the location of his vessels.”

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