At the end of the period of command which began on 6 July last year, the rear admiral of the Navy Stefano Costantino passed the baton to the peer of the Belgian Navy Renaud Flamant, who will hold the rotational guide of the aero-naval device for the next 4 months, up to next May.
The importance of this European commitment, aimed at contributing to the safeguarding of freedom of navigation and maritime safety in a context of absolute strategic importance for global traffic such as the Strait of Hormuz and adjacent areas, with specific reference to the Gulf and the Northern Arabic, was also confirmed by the wide participation in the change of command by the European diplomatic community in the UAE, including the Italian ambassador, Lorenzo Fanara, together with that of various military authorities, who representing the Italian Defense they saw the presence of the Chief of Staff of the operational command of interforce forces (COVI), the admiral of division Valter Zappellini.
Since the activation of the EMASOH mission in January 2020, Italy has assumed for the first time the command of the correlated military operation AGENOR, declining it with about 7 months of intense surveillance activity of sea communication routes in the region and direct support of the maritime traffic of interest to Italy and the other European nations adhering to the initiative, in a fundamental maritime context in the broader perimeter of the "Enlarged Mediterranean" and extremely strategic for the old continent, for trans-regional trade in general and for global energy supplies.
Under the guidance of the Italian admiral, dozens of escorts were conducted with military ships during transits in the Strait of Hormuz and several hundred interactions with merchant and passenger ships; with the AGENOR operation, through the manifest activity of air and naval presence of its units, a constant action of prevention and deterrence was simultaneously ensured, always careful to maintain a de-escalation approach to avoid increases in tension in an area characterized by extremely precarious stability.
Again in the spirit of broad-spectrum dialogue and cooperation, the 7 months of the Italian Command were also characterized by a significant increase in joint activities at sea with naval units and air assets from the realities of the region or those present in the area, such as Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, India, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, as well as the European Union and NATO countries. Likewise, collaborations have been finalized with the various organizations that operate for the monitoring of traffic by sea and for maritime safety, such as the Information Fusion Center (IFC) of Singapore and of Gurugram (India) ei Maritime Security Centre of Muscat (Oman), Karachi (Pakistan) and Antananarivo (Madagascar), in addition to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) of Dubai (UAE).
