02/06/2026
🇺🇸 Marco Rubio: “Today, there is no Iranian navy. There is no such thing.”
The actual reality is this:
🇮🇷 Iran has TWO navies.
Not one.
Two completely separate naval forces:
• The regular Iranian Navy (IRIN / Artesh)
• The IRGC Navy (IRGCN)
They use different command structures and different strategies.
And this is the part Western politicians constantly ignore:
Iran never built its military around giant American-style aircraft carriers and battleships.
Instead, Iran built a navy specifically designed for asymmetric warfare inside the narrow waters of the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.
That means:
fast attack boats,
sea mines,
mobile anti-ship missiles,
drone boats,
coastal missile batteries,
underground launch sites,
swarm tactics.
Hundreds of small armed vessels are much harder to destroy than a few giant warships.
You can sink a destroyer.
You cannot easily erase an entire swarm network spread across coastlines, tunnels, islands, and hidden bases.
And intelligence reports already contradicted Rubio’s fantasy weeks ago.
Even after major strikes, analysts reported Iran still retained much of its missile and military capability through underground facilities and dispersed infrastructure.
And the biggest proof Rubio is wrong?
The Strait of Hormuz itself.
If Iran’s navy truly “does not exist”…
why are global markets, oil companies, shipping firms, and the U.S. military still taking Iranian naval threats seriously?
Why are American forces still intercepting Iranian fast boats?
Why are insurance prices for Gulf shipping still reacting to Iran?
Because the Iranian naval threat clearly still exists.
Rubio is trying to sell Americans a Hollywood fantasy:
“enemy completely destroyed.”
Reality is far more complicated.
Iran’s military doctrine was specifically built around surviving attacks from much stronger powers.
If Iran has “no navy,” then why is the entire world still worried about what Iran can do in Hormuz?