A senior Iranian military commander has warned that US bases in Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar – and US aircraft carriers in the Gulf – are within range of Iranian missiles.
As tensions rise between Tehran and Washington, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards airspace division, said: “They are within our reach and we can hit them if they (Americans) make a move,”
Mr Hajizadeh said the Guards had improved the precision of their missiles, and specifically said they could hit the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Al Dhafra base in the United Arab Emirates and Kandahar base in Afghanistan (below) that host US forces.
“Our land-to-sea missiles have a range of 700 km…and the US aircraft carriers are our targets,” he was quoted as saying by the Iranian Tasnim news agency.
US President Donald Trump pulled out of an international agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme in May.
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.
The Islamic Republic’s government has ruled out negotiations with Washington over its military capabilities, particularly its missile programme run by the Guards.
Iran, which says its missile programme is purely defensive, has threatened to disrupt oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf if the United States tries to strangle Iranian oil exports.
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.
Earlier this month, the United States restored sanctions targeting Iran’s oil, banking and transportation sectors and threatened more action to stop its ‘outlaw’ policies, steps that Iran called economic warfare and vowed to defy.
Source » rte