IRIS Sabalan
1969 Alvand-class frigate
IRIS Sabalan (Persian: سبلان) was an Alvand-class frigate of the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy. She was launched in 1969.
Commissioned in June 1972 as part of a four-ship order, the Sabalan was originally named IIS Rostam, after Rostam, a legendary hero in the Shahnameh. It was renamed after the Islamic revolution after Sabalan, the Iranian mountain.
Service history
During the Iran–Iraq War, the warship became infamous for attacks against the crews of unarmed and often neutral tankers and other merchant ships. Before these attacks, Sabalan's captain would often board the ships and pretend to carry out a friendly inspection, sometimes even dining with the ship's master. Then he would open fire on the ship, sometimes aiming at the ship's bridge and living spaces. Often, the captain would radio his victims "Have a nice day" as Sabalan departed. These actions earned the captain the nickname "Captain Nasty".
Following the spillover of the conflict onto the Persian Gulf, the United States deployed warships in 1987 and 1988 to protect reflagged Kuwaiti shipping in the Persian Gulf.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “IRIS Sabalan” is 1969 Alvand-class frigate. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through IRIS, Sabalan and Alvand-class, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6067398. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1972, 1987 and 1988.
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This entry incorporates text from “IRIS Sabalan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.