The Iranian Army’s Ground Force “has its finger on the trigger” and is ready to respond to “any threat, at any point, of any scale and in the shortest time possible,” Ground Force Commander Kioumars Heydari has announced.
Speaking to reporters on Saturday on the second and final day of the snap Eqtedar 1402 (lit. ‘Power 2023’) exercises, Heydari said the drills were “a training exercise to respond to unexpected threats,” and meant to convey “a message of peace and friendship, especially to neighboring countries, and project the power of the Islamic Republic of Iran to its enemies.”
Friday and Saturday’s drills, held across Isfahan province in central Iran, saw the participation from all units of the Army Ground Force command, and involved large-scale tank maneuvers and the use of a range of new and upgraded equipment and weaponry, including the Shafaq, Almas and Dehlaviyeh ground-to-ground and air-to-ground missiles. The missiles were fired at targets between 8 and 20 km away.
The exercises also saw nighttime sorties overnight Friday into Saturday involving helicopters equipped with night-vision, radar jamming and long-range missiles.
A helicopter-based version of the GPS-guided Heidar anti-armor and bunker buster cruise missile was test-fired during the drills, with its 20 kg warhead hitting a mock enemy target some 30 km away.
Separately, the Army tested out the Sina and the Fateh, two homegrown loitering munition drones, while Ababil-4 multirole tactical drones dropped Qaem-5 smart glide bombs on targets 7 km away.
The Fath 360, an Iranian short-range satellite-guided tactical ballistic missile, and the Fajr-3 ballistic missile, were also launched during the drills, with their operational range varying from 120 to 180 km, according to Iranian media.
The dramatic regional escalation in the Middle East following Hamas’s surprise October 7 raids into southern Israel, and the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, have centered global attention on Iran’s response to the crisis, given the two countries’ decades-old animosity.
Instead of ramping up tensions, as predicted by Washington neocons, Iran has instead joined Russia, China, Brazil, Turkiye and other powers in calling for an immediate halt to the fighting, with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian telling United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a meeting Friday that Iran is prepared to back “any political solution aimed at halting” Israeli “crimes against humanity.”
At the same time, the Iranian diplomat has warned that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will have severe repercussions for its instigators if violence continues.
Meanwhile, senior officials in Washington and Tel Aviv have issued warnings to Iran not to get involved, with Netannyahu cabinet minister Nir Barakat threatening last week to cut off the Iranian “head of the snake” and launch attacks against the country to “wipe” Iran’s leaders “off the face of the Earth” if Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants attempted to open a second front.
The Islamic Republic has one of the largest and most comprehensive domestic military-industrial bases in the Middle East, including homegrown drone, missile, radar and defense electronics production capabilities. Combined with the country’s natural defensive geography and its proximity to the Hormuz Strait, through which upwards of 1/3 of global ship-based oil cargoes flow, a US or Israeli attack against Iran would threaten to plunge the world even deeper into economic, political and military catastrophe.