TEHRAN/ WASHINGTON: The Iranian service said on Wednesday it had successfully tested anti-missile defences for “sensitive” spots during war games in central Iran, after Israeli and US warnings over its nuclear programme.
“The country’s air defences are impeccably prepared to cover sensitive and vital installations through a multi-layered defence system,” said General Amir-Qader Rahimzadeh, commander of Hazrat Khatam al-Anbiya airbase at Semnan, quoted by Fars news agency.
The exercises, which began on Tuesday, combined the army’s “Majid” defence system with the “Dezful” system of the elite Revolutionary Guard Corps to destroy incoming voyage dumdums.
Iran’s central region is home to the Natanz enrichment factory and other nuclear spots.
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The war games there came ahead of a visit to Iran anticipated on Thursday by a European Union envoy coordinating addresses on reviving a worried nuclear deal between Tehran and major powers including the United States.
“A solid and multi-layered defence against voyage bullet attacks was one of the objects of the common air defence exercises that were carried out successfully,” Rahimzadeh said.
These air defence systems are from now on “stationed each over the country,” said the head of the aerospace branch of the Guard Corps, Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh.
“We didn’t have this capability 15 times agone. We depended on a foreign outfit for radar and ground-to-air systems,” he said.
Radars and electronic surveillance systems were also stationed in the operations, state news agency IRNA said. Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett advised in an address to the UN General Assembly last month that his country “will not allow” Tehran to develop a nuclear armament.
Washington also is committed to icing “Iran noway develops” a nuclear lemon, US President Joe Biden said in August. “We ’re putting tactfulness first and seeing where that takes us,” he said.
“But if tactfulness fails we ’re ready to turn to other options.” Both Biden and Bennett were intimating at the possible use of military means, Ali Shamhkani, the clerk of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, has twittered. Tehran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes.
EU envoy Enrique Mora is to visit Iran with mounting pressure from European countries, as well as from the Biden administration, for a nippy resumption of accommodations on the US return to the 2015 nuclear deal.
Iran’s foreign ministry blazoned Mora’s charge to the country.
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The 2015 deal gave Iran warrants relief in return for checks on its nuclear programme but has been on life support since 2018 when also US chairman Donald Trump unilaterally pulled out and reimposed crippling warrants. Iran has said constantly that it’s ready to renew addresses “soon”.
Rob Malley, the US moderator who led circular addresses with Iran before this time, said in Washington on Wednesday that Biden’s administration preferred a return to the 2015 deal. But it was possible Tehran will “ choose a different path”, and the US is working with indigenous abettors on a Plan B, he said.
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