Tasnim – Iran’s Navy Commander Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi said the country is working on a new naval destroyer, dubbed Dena.


In a televised interview on Saturday night, Khanzadi said Dena will be the newest destroyer that the Iranian Navy is going to launch as part of a broad project known as Mowj (wave).

His comments came on the same day that the Navy officially received a new homegrown destroyer, dubbed Sahand.

Rear Admiral Khanzadi said Iran has turned the threat of foreign sanctions into an opportunity and become self-sufficient in manufacturing naval gear.

“It is now very easy for us to manufacture destroyers like Sahand, which enjoys a new generation of gearbox,” the commander said.

Sahand weighs 1,300 tons, is 96 meters in length, and can cruise at a speed of 25 knots.

The new Iranian destroyer can be equipped with various surface, subsurface and aerial weapons, and also carry out radar jamming and deception operations. It will soon begin an ocean mission.

Sahand is a stealth destroyer furnished with anti-submarine systems, surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, point-defense weapon system, and anti-aircraft guns.

In a meeting with Navy commanders on Wednesday, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei praised as “great and fabulous” the advances that Iranian military forces, the Navy in particular, have made since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, saying the Navy’s success in bringing into service homegrown vessels such as the Sahand destroyer or Fateh and Qadir submarines heralds more progress day after day.