evidence: Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters "The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval exercise started Wednesday morning for the defence of the Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf," the official IRNA news agency reported, citing IRGC navy commander Ali Ozmaee as saying that the drills "were held in Abu Musa island and Greater and Lesser Tunb". The barren islands contain little in the way of natural resources. Of the three, only Abu Musa has a civilian population, which numbers around 2,000 people. But the three islands sit near the Strait of Hormuz, the vital sea passage between the Gulf and the open ocean through which around 20 percent of the world's oil, and around 25 percent of the world's liquified natural gas, pass through. [...] For nearly twenty years, the UAE and Iran maintained an uneasy interim agreement which led to both countries sharing Abu Musa's offshore oil revenues. However, after talks collapsed to settle the dispute in 1992, Iran began cementing its military presence on the islands.