The Iranian government spends a great deal of time whining about how U.S. sanctions against its illegal nuclear program are crushing its economy and causing civilians to suffer, but the regime still has plenty of money to spend on weapons.
On Tuesday, the Iranian military posted a video showing off a massive “underground missile city” packed full of expensive weapons.
Iran has a history of releasing boastful “missile city” videos when it feels threatened. Tuesday’s video was actually the third such propaganda release in less than a month.
In January, shortly before President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Iranian state television broadcast footage of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Gen. Hossein Salami visiting an underground missile city hidden somewhere “in the mountains.” This missile base was ostensibly involved in Iran’s ineffective missile attack against Israel.
In 2016, when the Obama administration was dithering over reimposing sanctions against Iran for blatantly violating President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal, the Iranians published footage of an underground missile city stocked with potentially nuclear-capable ballistic missiles that clearly violated U.N. Security Council resolutions. Obama backed down from imposing sanctions despite Tehran’s taunts.
The Jerusalem Post said the missile city in Tuesday’s video appeared to contain at least five different types of long-range missile, including the Emad missile – the same class of U.N.-defying weapon showcased in the 2016 video.
In the video, Iranian armed forces chief of staff Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri drove through his vast inventory of missiles in a jeep, made a point of walking across an Israeli flag, and claimed “Iran’s iron fist is far stronger than before.”
“All the dimensions that required for generating a capability that is ten times [stronger than] the one deployed during Operation True Promise II has been created,” Bagheri boasted. “The enemy will definitely fall behind in this balance of power.”
Operation True Promise II was Iran’s April missile attack on Israel. It was a humiliating disaster for Iran by any objective measure, but Iranian regime propaganda portrays the attack as a rousing success that terrified the Israeli and American military establishments.
“This facility guarantees our readiness, no matter the circumstances,” said Iranian Aerospace Force Commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who toured the underground base with Bagheri.
Iranian state media said it was time to introduce the latest underground missile city to the world, and demonstrate Iran’s “military preparedness to defend the homeland,” due to “escalating threats and blatant warmongering from the Donald Trump administration and the Israeli regime.”
Iran’s state-run PressTV claimed on Wednesday the newly unveiled IRGC facility is “the largest yet, both in scale and firepower.”
“In a single frame, at least 78 Kheibar Shekan or Haj Qasem missiles were visible, with additional footage showing tunnels filled with dozens more, suggesting that the base houses at least hundreds, if not thousands, of missiles,” PressTV gushed.
The report quoted Hajizadeh claiming that Iran could reveal one of its “missile cities” each week for the next two years, and still would not have revealed them all.
