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Dubai:
Iran displayed a surface-to-surface ballistic missile on Thursday that Defence Minister Amir Hatami acknowledged had a wide range of 1,400 kilometres and a model new cruise missile, ignoring US requires that Tehran halt its missile programme.
“The surface-to-surface missile, called martyr Qassem Soleimani, has a range of 1,400 km and the cruise missile, called martyr Abu Mahdi, has a range of over 1,000 km,” Hatami acknowledged in a televised speech.
Pictures of the missiles had been confirmed on state TV, which it acknowledged was “the newest Iranian cruise missile that will further strengthen Iran’s deterrence power”.
Soleimani, head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis had been killed in January in a US strike on their convoy in Baghdad airport.
“Missiles and particularly cruise missiles are very important for us … the fact that we have increased the range from 300 to 1,000 in less than two years is a great achievement,” acknowledged Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
“Our military might and missile programmes are defensive.”
The announcement comes as Washington is pushing to extend a UN-imposed arms embargo in direction of Iran, which is due to expire in October beneath Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
Tensions have been extreme between Tehran and Washington since 2018, when President Donald Trump pulled out the United States from the deal and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran.
Washington says its purpose is to energy Tehran to agree a broader deal that locations stricter limits on its nuclear work, curbs its ballistic missile program and ends its regional proxy wars. Iran has rejected talks as long as US sanctions keep in place.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged on Wednesday Trump has directed him to set off ‘snapback’ – a return of all US sanctions on Iran – on the UN Security Council in New York on Thursday, after the council rejected Washington’s bid to extend Tehran’s arms embargo.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is printed from a syndicated feed.)
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