{"id":13577,"date":"2018-09-02T07:24:40","date_gmt":"2018-09-02T07:24:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=13577"},"modified":"2018-09-02T07:24:40","modified_gmt":"2018-09-02T07:24:40","slug":"iran-says-it-plans-to-boost-ballistic-cruise-missile-capacity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=13577","title":{"rendered":"Iran says it plans to boost ballistic, cruise missile capacity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nDUBAI: Iran plans to boost its ballistic and cruise missile capacity and acquire modern fighter planes and submarines, the Iranian state news agency IRNA quoted a senior Defense Ministry official as saying on Saturday.
News of the military development plans came a day after Iran dismissed a French call for negotiations on Tehran\u2019s future nuclear plans, its ballistic missile arsenal and its role in wars in Syria and Yemen, following the US pullout from Tehran\u2019s nuclear agreement with world powers.
State media also reported the launch earlier this week of war games involving some 150,000 volunteer Basij militia members, who vowed to defend the Islamic state against \u201cforeign threats\u201d including its arch foe, the United States.
Tehran is furious over US President Donald Trump\u2019s decision to withdraw from the accord on Iran\u2019s nuclear program and re-impose sanctions on Tehran.
Senior Iranian officials have warned the country will not yield easily to a renewed US campaign to strangle Iran\u2019s vital oil exports. They say the country\u2019s missile program is solely for defense purposes and is not negotiable as demanded by the United States and European countries.
\u201cIncreasing ballistic and cruise missile capacity … and the acquisition of next-generation fighters and heavy and long-range vessels and submarines with various weapons capabilities are among the new plans of this ministry,\u201d said Mohammad Ahadi, deputy defense minister for international affairs, IRNA said.
Speaking to Tehran-based foreign military attaches, Ahadi said international sanctions had not hampered the development of Iran\u2019s arms industry.
\u201cWe have the necessary infrastructure and what we need to do is research and development, and at the same time upgrade and update the defense industry while relying on the country\u2019s very high scientific capacities and tens of thousands of graduates in technical fields and engineering,\u201d Ahadi was quoted as saying.
He also defended Iran\u2019s role in conflicts in Iraq and Syria: \u201cIf Iran and its allies in Syria and Iraq had not stopped Islamic State, today the map of the region would be different and the world would face a terrible challenge.\u201d
Separately, the head of the Defense Ministry\u2019s naval industries said Iran was developing a water jet propulsion system that would be ready by next March and a military commander said the air force planned to adopt Iran\u2019s new Kowsar fighter plane after successful tests, the semi-official news agency Tasnim reported.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said last month the Islamic Republic\u2019s military prowess was what deterred Washington from attacking it.
The exercises by the Basij militia, which are led by the elite Revolutionary Guards, come ahead of massive annual rallies planned for later this month to mark the start of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war.
\u201cThe motto of these war games is unity … and to declare that, when it comes to adversity and threats from foreigners, we all join to defend the (Islamic Republic\u2019s) system,\u201d Basij commander Gholam-Hossein Gheibparvar was quoted as saying by IRNA.\u00a0
Meanwhile, Iran on Saturday rejected a Reuters report that Tehran has moved missiles to Iraq, saying it aimed to hurt Iran\u2019s ties with neighbors, the Iranian state news agency IRNA reported.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Twitter he was \u201cdeeply concerned\u201d by the reports that Iran was transferring ballistic missiles into Iraq. He urged Iraqi leaders to quickly form a new government after a May 12 parliamentary election.
\u201cSuch false and ridiculous news have no purpose other than affecting Iran\u2019s foreign relations, especially with its neighbors,\u201d Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said, according to IRNA.
Iranian, Iraqi and Western sources told Reuters that Iran has given ballistic missiles to Shiite proxies in Iraq and is developing the capacity to build more there.
\u201cThis news is solely aimed at creating fears in the countries of the region,\u201d Qassemi added.
Pompeo, in his tweet on the reports of the transfer of the missiles, said, \u201cIf true, this would be a gross violation of Iraqi sovereignty and of UNSCR 2231.\u201d
He was referring to UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which underpinned the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iraq and six world powers. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the deal earlier this year and his administration is currently reimposing sanctions against Tehran.
Earlier, Pompeo spoke by phone with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi \u201cto reaffirm US support for Iraq\u2019s efforts to form a modern, nationalist Iraqi government,\u201d State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement.
Pompeo emphasized the importance of safeguarding Iraq\u2019s sovereignty during this critical time, she said.
He also spoke to Iraqi Vice President Ayad Allawi to discuss political developments and relations between Baghdad and Irbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in north Iraq, Nauert added.
Any sign that Iran is preparing a more aggressive missile policy in Iraq will exacerbate tensions between Tehran and Washington, already heightened by Trump\u2019s decision to pull out of the 2015 nuclear deal.
It would also embarrass France, Germany and Britain, the three European signatories to the nuclear deal, as they have been trying to salvage the agreement despite the new US sanctions against Tehran.
According to three Iranian officials, two Iraqi intelligence sources and two Western intelligence sources, Iran has transferred short-range ballistic missiles to allies in Iraq over the last few months. Five of the officials said it was helping those groups to start making their own.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DUBAI: Iran plans to boost its ballistic and cruise missile capacity and acquire modern fighter planes and submarines, the Iranian state news agency IRNA quoted a senior Defense Ministry official as saying on Saturday.News of the military development plans came a day after Iran dismissed a French call for negotiations on Tehran\u2019s future nuclear plans,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":13578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}