Overview
- The Italian Navy has sent the minesweepers Crotone and Rimini from Augusta toward Djibouti to be closer to any future clearance work near the Strait of Hormuz.
- Defense Minister Guido Crosetto says Italy will act only under an international legal mandate with consent from parties in the region to avoid exposing crews to attack.
- A logistics ship, Atlante, and the multirole combat unit Montecuccoli will link up en route, bringing the task group to roughly 400 personnel who trained in the Mediterranean in recent weeks.
- The deployment is meant to plug into a planned multinational group of about twenty countries preparing to clear mines that reports attribute to Iranian forces in a vital shipping corridor.
- Minesweepers are slow and built to find and disable underwater explosives rather than fight, so pre‑positioning in Djibouti shortens a Gulf transit that could otherwise take about a month.