[6][7] IRGC's Navy has steadily improved its capabilities to support unconventional warfare and defend Iran's offshore facilities, coastlines, and islands in the Persian Gulf.

[11] On 17 September 1985, Iran's supreme leader and commander-in-chief Ruhollah Khomeini ordered Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to create three branches including navy.

As a response, IRGC ordered mining west of Farsi Island on the route of the very first caravan—the Kuwaiti supertanker SS Bridgeton escorted by four US warships—which successfully hit the tanker itself.

[citation needed] On 21 June 2004, eight sailors and Royal Marines were seized by forces of the Revolutionary Guards' Navy while training Iraqi river patrol personnel in the Persian Gulf.

[15] On 23 March 2007, fifteen sailors and Royal Marines from HMS Cornwall were seized by forces of the Revolutionary Guards' Navy in the Persian Gulf.

The Revolutionary Guards Navy has a large inventory of small fast attack craft, and specializes in asymmetric hit-and-run tactics.

It is more akin to a guerrilla force at sea, and maintains large arsenals of coastal defense and anti-ship cruise missiles and mines.

[5][3] Janes recognizes the IRGCN as the resuscitator of fast inshore attack craft (FIAC) in the modern era, as well as the most prominent practitioner of "small boat swarm tactics that combine speed, mass, co-ordinated manoeuvre, low radar signature, and concealment" among naval forces of the world.