Iranian Defence Minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami has underscored the country’s resolve to develop its defence sector in the face of external threats.
The general told a Defence Ministry gathering on Thursday that even though hostilities against Iran in strategic areas would persist, “in regional fields and the [country’s] defence and missile power […] we [the Islamic Republic] will continue moving towards great objectives with all our power”.
The statement comes a few days after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy released a video showing its newest "missile city", a compound equipped with numerous systems for launching cruise and ballistic missiles with different ranges.
This followed the Iranian military successfully testing last month a new domestically made missile with a range of 300 kilometres (186 miles) that is capable of hitting targets with pinpoint accuracy in all weather conditions.
In January, Iranian media cited an unnamed government source as saying that the Islamic Republic’s vast array of missiles had helped the country parry the threat posed by the US Navy, seen as one of Tehran’s main strategic adversaries.
Earlier that month, Iran staged large-scale ballistic and cruise missile drills, with the exercises seeing missiles fired from ships and coastal batteries, the deployment of a variety of combat and reconnaissance drones, and the firing of a ballistic missile at a seaborne target over 1,800 kilometres (1,100 miles) away.
The tensions escalated in early January 2020, when a top Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani, was killed in a US drone strike authorised by then-President Donald Trump.