Iran showed off parts of its new
Russian S-300 missile defense system during National Army Day on Sunday,
where President Hassan Rouhani said the country’s armed forces were no
threat to neighboring countries.
Every year, Iran’s armed forces hold parades
across the country to mark Army Day. In a ceremony in Tehran, broadcast
live on state television, trucks carrying the missiles drove past a
podium where Rouhani and military commanders were standing. Soldiers
also marched passed the podium and fighter jets and bombers took part in
an air display.
“The power of our armed forces is not aimed
at any of our neighbors … Its purpose is to defend Islamic Iran and act
as an active deterrent,” Rouhani was quoted as saying by the state news
agency IRNA, in a speech at the Army Day ceremony.
Russia delivered the first part of the S-300
missile defense system to Iran last week, one of the most advanced
systems of its kind that can engage multiple aircraft and ballistic
missiles around 150 km (90 miles) away.
Russia has said it canceled a contract to
deliver S-300s to Iran in 2010 under pressure from the West. President
Vladimir Putin lifted the ban in April 2015, after an interim agreement
that paved the way for July’s full nuclear deal with Iran that ended
international sanctions.
Since then, Iran has upset the United States
by carrying out four ballistic missile tests, which the United States
and its European allies said were in defiance of the United Nations
resolution adopted in July.
Rouhani said on Sunday that during the
nuclear talks Iranian negotiators also aimed to maintain and boost the
country’s military capabilities.
Iran has two armies, a regular one which
operates as a national defensive force, and the Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps that was created after the Revolution to protect the Islamic
Republic against both internal and external adversaries.
The army has the biggest ground force in Iran and IRGC is in control of growing arsenal of ballistic missiles.
In its first overseas operation since the
Revolution, the regular army said earlier this month that it had
deployed some of its special forces and commandos to Syria to help
President Bashar al-Assad in the civil war there.
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