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Jane's Defence Weekly, 28 June 2017

Two Assad-class corvettes that were built in Italy for Iraq in the 1980s have finally been delivered.

The Italian news agency ANSA reported on 19 May that the two ships would leave La Spezia, where they were moored in the Italian naval base, for Iraq on the semi-submersible heavy carrier Eide Trader .

AIS data shows Eide Trader left La Spezia on 22 May and stopped near Iraq's Basra offshore oil terminal on 21 June. Six days later it was sailing back towards the Strait of Hormuz listing Al-Fujairah as its destination, indicating it had unloaded the corvettes.

Fincantieri built six Assad-class corvettes for Baghdad in the 1980s, but none of them were delivered due to the imposition of a UN arms embargo on Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990.