BEHIND THE IRAN HEADLINES Series, June 6, 2023, Alireza Jafarzadeh, NCRI-US Deputy Director
This morning, at a ceremony attended by the Iranian regime’s President Ebrahim Raisi and commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Tehran announced that it had made its first hypersonic ballistic missile named Fattah which has a range of 1,400 km and is capable of penetrating all defense shields.
The Iranian regime has a history of lying about or exaggerating its capabilities, and it is particularly desperate to boast about its military capabilities to make up for its extreme weakness and impotence inside Iran in light of the nationwide rejection of this regime by the Iranian people.
However, the world must not ignore the words and actions of the Iranian regime, especially since much of Iran’s money and resources have been spent on nuclear, missile, drone, and terrorism of the Iranian regime over the past four decades.
Since 2017, NCRI has exposed 42 missile sites involved in the production, testing, and launching of missiles by the IRGC.
We also released a book, Iran’s Ballistic Buildup, which documented the nefarious missile program of the Iranian regime.
But why and how Tehran has managed to advance its missile program? Well, missiles are an integral part of the regime’s foreign policy based on terrorism and threatening the rest of the world; it is also an integral part of its nuclear weapons program.
What contributed significantly to the advancement of the regime’s missile program has been the policy of appeasement by the West, either the United States or Europe, over the past four decades.
The more Tehran violated its international commitments, the more it was rewarded. Remember that the United Nations will lift all the ballistic missile restrictions on the Iranian regime in October 2023.
That is why we have been calling for all six UN Security Council resolutions and the sanctions that come with them to be reimposed on the Iranian regime. The regime’s behavior is the best justification for that.