Claims that Iran has not participated in, or has been expelled from, Simonstown naval engagements this week appear false on the information available.

At odds with reporting to the contrary, multiple sources who spoke to The Common Sense say Iranian forces have participated fully in the exercises since Saturday. According to witness accounts and contacts familiar with activity at the Simonstown naval base, those forces have not exited and remain present at the base. The exercises, branded Exercise Will for Peace 2026, were announced as a week-long multinational exercise involving South Africa alongside China, Russia, and Iran.

As pressure on the South African government ratcheted upwards, South African state media first reported that the Iranians were ordered to withdraw. Those claims were later cited by major media companies. However, no official South African document, communiqué, or statement confirming that the Iranians had not participated since the exercises commenced on Saturday, or that they were subsequently expelled and withdrew, has been produced in any public reporting.

In a post on social media this afternoon, the South African National Defence Force confirmed that an Iranian naval vessel is participating in Exercise Will for Peace 2026, explicitly listing the Iranian corvette Naghi among the four ships that have departed South African shores for the sea phase of the drills. The SANDF statement places official confirmation behind the continued participation of Iranian forces in the exercise.

Witnesses at Simonstown told The Common Sense that Iranian naval personnel and vessels remain at the base and continue to engage in various activities alongside their Chinese, Russian, and South African counterparts. Public reporting over the past week has repeatedly described Iranian ships as present at Simonstown and active in the build-up to the drills, including imagery and accounts of Iranian naval movements in and out of the harbour serving the naval base.

To solve the apparent mystery, The Common Sense approached the Department of Defence for clarity and asked for:

• Any official communiqué or statement expelling the Iranians;

• Confirmation that the Iranians had not participated in the exercises since Saturday; and

• Confirmation that the Iranians had left Simonstown.

No response had been received by the time of publishing, and any comment will be added to this report as soon as it is received.

In the absence of solid information to the contrary, what appears to have occurred is that, as local and international pressure on South Africa’s government grew around the exercises, exacerbated by reports of Iranian security forces killing and detaining civil rights protesters amid a popular uprising, a story was manufactured by the state and then placed in the media that the government had told the Iranians they were not welcome at Exercise Will for Peace 2026, even as it permitted them to remain engaged.

The hope was that this would confuse public and investor opinion, drawing it into a pointless debate about the meaning of the words “participation” and “engagement” in order to draw attention away from the central fact of the matter: that Iranian military forces were attending an exercise hosted at a South African naval base together with two of the Western world’s other greatest strategic and ideological adversaries.