Damavand. The first "destroyer" in the Caspian

Damavand is the first corvette built by an Iranian shipyard in the Caspian Sea. Helicopter AB 212 ASW above the ship.

The small Iranian Caspian flotilla has recently added its largest warship, the Damavand, to date. Despite the fact that the block, like the twin ship Jamaran, was extolled by the local media as a destroyer, in fact - in terms of the current classification - this is a typical corvette.

Before the collapse of the USSR, the Caspian Sea was considered by the command of the Navy of the Islamic Republic of Iran only as a training base for the main forces operating in the waters of the Persian and Oman Gulfs. The dominance of the superpower was undeniable and, despite not the best political relations between the two countries at that time, only small forces were constantly based here, and the port infrastructure was rather modest. However, everything changed in the early 90s, when each of the three former Soviet republics bordering the Caspian Sea became an independent state and all began to demand their rights to develop the rich oil and natural gas deposits beneath it. However, Iran, the most militarily strongest state in the region after the Russian Federation, owned only about 12% of the basin's surface, and mostly in areas where the seabed is at great depths, which makes it difficult to extract natural resources from under it. . Therefore, Iran was not satisfied with the new situation and demanded a share of 20%, which soon turned out to be in dispute with Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. These countries were not going to respect, from their point of view, the unauthorized demands of their neighbors and continued to extract oil in the disputed areas. The unwillingness to determine the exact course of the demarcation lines in the Caspian Sea has also resulted in losses to fisheries. A significant role in inciting these disputes was played by politicians from Russia, who still sought, as in the Soviet Union, to play the role of the main player in the region.

Iran's natural reaction was to create a Caspian flotilla to protect the country's economic interests. However, this proved difficult for two reasons. Firstly, this is the unwillingness of the Russian Federation to use the only possible route from Iran to the Caspian Sea for the transfer of Iranian ships, which was the Russian network of inland waterways. Therefore, their construction remained at local shipyards, but this was complicated by the second reason - the concentration of most shipyards in the Persian Gulf. First, Iran had to build shipyards on the coast of the Caspian Sea almost from scratch. This task was successfully solved, as evidenced by the commissioning of the Paykan missile carrier in 2003, and then two twin installations in 2006 and 2008. However, consider these ships as promising designs - after all, it was about "landing" copies of the French speeders "Caman" of the La Combattante IIA type, i.e. units delivered at the turn of the 70-80s. allowed, however, to gain invaluable experience and know-how for the Caspian shipyards, necessary for the task of delivering larger and more versatile ships.