By the Editorial Team of TLF
Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has threatened to drive forces he described as enemies out of the Arabian Sea, claiming Iranian attacks had already pushed them away from waters off the country's southern coast.
Al Jazeera reported the remarks on September 28, citing Iranian state media. The message marked Sacred Defence Week, commemorating the Iran-Iraq War, and the anniversary of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's killing in 2024.
No deadline was given. In the excerpt, Khamenei praised Iranian fighters and those guarding the Strait of Hormuz, saying opposing forces had suffered when they ventured closer to Iran.
"The time is fast approaching when the Arabian Sea, too, will be cleared of their presence," he said, according to Al Jazeera's English rendering.
The military claim remains independently unverified. The published passage supplies no ship names, locations or supporting evidence, and the original statement could not be located in the English and Persian sources searched for this article.
Read alongside earlier Iranian statements, the warning suggests Tehran wants to extend its pressure beyond the narrow waters of Hormuz into the wider approaches used by commercial shipping and foreign naval forces.
That ambition has surfaced before. SBS reported on September 10 that Revolutionary Guard spokesman Hossein Mohebi had announced a planned maritime control zone stretching from waters near Chabahar into parts of the Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea. Precise coordinates were to follow.
Khamenei's language also fits an earlier appeal to neighbouring governments. Reuters said he had urged Gulf rulers to unite against a shared enemy and cooperate on defence. That appeal sits uneasily beside Tehran's attacks on military facilities and other infrastructure in Gulf states, which Reuters also documented.
For shipping, geography matters. Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, carrying energy exports towards buyers far beyond the region.
The disruption is already measurable. Energy Information Administration figures put oil flows through Hormuz at 4.9 million barrels a day in the second quarter of 2026, down from 21.6 million in the final quarter of 2025.
Those figures describe trade through June. They cannot establish where warships are today or verify Khamenei's account of a retreat. His latest message leaves unanswered how Iran would enforce its threat across the Arabian Sea, which forces it would target, and what that would mean for ships still trying to move through the region.
Photo: Gemini
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