Tehran | The armed forces of the Islamic Republic fired ballistic missiles “from the depths of the earth” on Wednesday on the last day of military exercises in Gulf waters, Iranian media reported.
These missiles fired a day after the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s ideological army, targeted the model of an American aircraft carrier near the Strait of Hormuz, an important shipping lane, especially for oil tankers.
Images broadcast by state television showed bursts of flame, smoke and dust, and something that looked like four projectiles rising into the sky from desert terrain.
In a statement posted on their Sepahnews website, the Revolutionary Guards claimed that it was “the first time in the world” that such an exercise had been carried out, without further details.
They praised “the successful launch of ballistic missiles from the depths of the earth in a totally camouflaged manner”, according to them “an important achievement which could pose serious challenges to enemy intelligence organizations”.
The Revolutionary Guards also reported throwing Sukhoi Su-22 fighter-bomber bombs to target “predetermined positions” on Bani Farur Island in Iranian territorial waters.
“These launches were carried out without the usual platform and equipment,” Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh, head of the Revolutionary Guards aerospace branch, said in a television interview.
“Buried missiles suddenly pierce the ground and hit their targets with precision,” he added.
These exercises come as tensions between Washington and Tehran continue to grow, especially since the United States’ unilateral withdrawal in 2018 from the international Iran nuclear agreement and the reinstatement of US sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
On two occasions in the past 13 months, the two countries have appeared on the brink of war: in June 2019 after Iran destroyed a US drone in the Gulf, and then in January, after Washington’s elimination of Qassem Soleimani, powerful General of the Revolutionary Guards, killed by a drone strike near Baghdad airport.
