Few countries on earth can claim a navy with greater ancient prestige than Iran’s, whose heritage dates back to the First Persian Empire of 500BC.

One wonders what those great and terrible warriors would think if they could see the state of the Iranian Navy now.

Four days into the US-Israeli war on Iran, the Islamic Republic’s naval headquarters is in ruins, one of its elite admirals is dead, and its finest warships are ablaze in the Gulf of Oman, home to its southern fleet.

US President Donald Trump has made the annihilation of the Iranian Navy a key goal of his campaign, with the US boasting on Monday that all 11 of Iran’s vessels stationed in the Gulf of Oman have been destroyed.

American forces have also mostly destroyed the headquarters of the Iranian naval fleet in the port of Bandar Abbas, while Ali Shamkhani, an admiral in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps, has been killed in an Israeli air strike.

The president’s goal appears to be clearing the Gulf of Oman of warships used by Tehran to enforce a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, the critical trade route that carries one-fifth of the world’s oil shipments. Iran said it had closed the strait on Monday.

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The Telegraph, London