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Iran’s state TV has released footage of what it described as a new Revolutionary Guard “missile city” – a military base brimming with cruise and ballistic weapons, according to reports.
Alireza Tangsiri, commander of the elite Guards’ naval unit, told state media that the fortified depot where rows of missiles were seen contained “electronic warfare” equipment to detect enemy signals.
The Islamic Republic’s report, which did not disclose the exact location, said the base’s equipment included radar, monitoring, simulation and disruption systems.
“What we see today is a small section of the great and expansive missile capability of Revolutionary Guards’ naval forces,” Guards commander Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami said in the broadcast.
Last year, the Guards said it had built several underground “missile cities” along the Gulf coastline as as tensions with the US, Israel and in the region continue to mount, CNBC reported.
“Iran’s parading of its missile capabilities fits in with broader efforts to maintain pressure on Washington in response to extensive US sanctions,” Torbjorn Soltvedt, principal Middle East and North Africa analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC on Tuesday.
“On the nuclear, missile and regional security front, Iranian efforts to place a cost on US sanctions continue apace,” he added.
Washington and Tehran have both indicated a desire to return to the Iranian nuclear deal signed in 2015 that offered the country economic relief from sanctions in return for limits to its nuclear program.
In 2018, the Trump administration pulled out of the deal three years after it was brokered by the Obama administration.
Since the US withdrawal, Iran has admitted it’s breached the 2015 deal by using advanced uranium-enriching centrifuges in an underground plant.
However, each side now wants the other to make concessions.
Tehran demands that Washington lifts sanctions first, but the Biden administration says it won’t do so unless Iran reverses its breaches of the nuke deal.
Those breaches include ramping its uranium enrichment and stockpiling beyond the limits cited in the accord; curtailing US inspector access to its nuclear facilities; and producing uranium metal, which can be used to produce a nuclear bomb.
The “missile city” raises questions about how the nuclear deal will be revived.
“There’s also no doubt that Iran’s growing missile capability is a complicating factor for the Biden administration as it explores the possibility of a UC return to the JCPOA,” Soltvedt told CNBC, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known commonly as the Iran deal.
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