Daily Times

Iran has the ability to build ballistic missiles with a broader range, a senior commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards said on Monday, according to the semi-official Fars News agency.

Iran’s missiles currently cover a range of 2000 kilometres (1,240 miles) and many “enemy bases” are within 800 kilometres of the Islamic Republic, Amirali Hajizadeh, head of the Revolutionary Guards’ airspace division, was cited as saying. U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of an international agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme in May and reimposed sanctions on Tehran. He said the deal was flawed because it did not include curbs on Iran’s development of ballistic missiles or its support for proxies in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq. “We have the ability to build missiles with a broader range,” Hajizadeh said, according to Fars News. He added, “We don’t have limitations from a technical perspective or by conventions with regard to missile range.”

The Iranian government has ruled out negotiations with Washington over its military capabilities, particularly its missile programme run by the Guards. Last month, Hajizadeh said that U.S. bases in Afghanistan, the UAE and Qatar, and U.S. aircraft carriers in the Gulf were within range of Iranian missiles.

In October, the Revolutionary Guards fired missiles at Islamic State militants in Syria after the Islamist group took responsibility for an attack at a military parade in Iran that killed 25 people, nearly half of them members of the Guards.

Published in Daily Times, December 11^th 2018.