Iran announces third missile bunker factory

IRAN has built a third underground plant to manufacture ballistic missiles, the head of its Revolutionary Guards aerospace division, General Amir-Ali Hadjizadeh, said yesterday.

The announcement, as US President Donald Trump makes a maiden foreign tour in which Saudi and Israeli concerns about Iran have loomed large, is likely to stoke new tensions with Washington.

“Step by step, we are developing our defensive capability and I announce today that, in recent years, we have built a third underground factory for the manufacture of missiles,” Hadjizadeh said.

“We are going to develop our ballistic power. It’s normal that our enemies, that is to say the United States and Israel, are angry when we show off our underground missile bases because they want the Iranian people to be in a position of weakness.”

In October 2015, state television aired footage for the first time of a base that Hadjizadeh said was 500m underground and stocked with a range of missiles.

Armed forces spokesman General Masoud Jazayeri said earlier this month that Iran had a number of such underground silos.

The US says Iran’s missile programme is a breach of international law because the missiles could carry nuclear warheads in the future.

Iran says the missiles are designed to carry conventional warheads only and are a legitimate part of it defensive capabilities. – AFP