Salami made his comments on Thursday in a ceremony dedicated to Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, who is often praised as the father of Iran's missile program.
“Regarding the successful installation of ballistic missiles into the [IRGC] speedboats, the enemy’s aircraft carriers will no longer be safe in any spot,” the general said.
The IRGC chief added that US sanctions had stimulated the rapid development of Iran’s defence technologies, turning Iranian “ballistic missiles into precision-guided ones,” while claiming that the country's reinforced defence, missile and drone capabilities will “give the harshest response to the enemy's slightest mistake.”
Iran has accumulated a large arsenal of domestically-created conventional short-, medium- and long-range ballistic and cruise missile systems. The US, the European Union, Saudi Arabia and Israel have voiced concerns about these weapons posing a threat to regional and global security, but Iran has insisted that the missiles are meant as a deterrent against possible enemy attack, and repeatedly stressed that their possession is “not negotiable” for the Islamic Republic.
Earlier in November, Iranian and US officials had engaged in a back and forth debate about whether or not Iran had destroyed a second US spy drone, with the Iranian side claiming drone wreckage was being retrieved near the southwestern port city of Mahshahr, while the Pentagon has denied reports that any US drone was shot down in the region, and said that all US equipment “has been accounted for.”
