Conquest-Seeking, Death-Threatening Iran

"One of the prominent characteristics of this missile is its ability to evade radar detection and penetrate enemy air defence systems, thanks to its low radar signature."

"This missile has the capability to utilize various warheads for different missions."

Iranian Defence Minister General Mohammad Reza Ashtiani

Iran's Defense Minister Brigadier General Mohammad-Reza Ashtiani speaks in a press conference during the unveiling of a new surface-to-surface 4th generation Khorramshahr ballistic missile called Khaibar in Tehran, Iran, May 25, 2023. (credit: WANA (WEST ASIA NEWS AGENCY) VIA REUTERS

"During a follow-up statement by Iran’s deputy defense minister for Logistics Mahdi Farhi, the official appeared to indicate this is a multi-stage missile, such that the warhead has its own guidance system and can reach high speeds and achieve greater accuracy. The official elaborated on claims that it is immune to electronic warfare, since it is not guided by satellites. He also elaborated on claims the warhead, that separates, has a low radar cross-section and that the missile can change direction during later stages of flight."

"Iran’s new test of a missile joins a long lineage of  testing and claims about new missiles. It frequently gives these missiles new names, even if they are very similar to previously known missiles, with some updates. Iran claims new abilities for these missiles, such as “pinpoint accuracy” and the ability to defeat air defenses." 

"Overall then, the new test of a missile should be seen in the context of Iran often claiming to test missiles with new capabilities during historic anniversaries and continuing to boast about them."

"Considering that Iran has exported missile technology to the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah; as well as sending actual missiles to Syria, Lebanon and Iraq; the missile threats must be taken seriously. The overall threat to countries like Israel is that these missiles have large warheads and may be part of the larger Iranian drive for weaponizing its nuclear program."

Seth J. Frantzman, Jerusalem Post 

So much for the nuclear talks that have taken years to negotiate off and on and which have accomplished precisely nothing. At no time during these negotiations between the US, EU and Tehran negotiators was there mention or allusion to rocketry meant to carry nuclear warheads. In the prolongation of the negotiations, Tehran essentially accomplished what it set out to do -- appear to take the concerns of the US and EU seriously, while earnestly negotiating in 'good faith', endlessly extending the talks and using the extended time to get on with its ballistic missile program.

 

At the very same time that it continued to enrich uranium much beyond its agreed-to limit, even while its experiments in the creation of nuclear fissile material and the production of nuclear heads to fit on the missiles commenced apace. Taking steps all the while to create deep underground bunkers to house its production laboratories at a depth that would be immune to surface bombing. Pre-emptive bombing that might conceivably be carried out by the very Middle East country that Tehran has stated time and again it has plans to annihilate with the use of nuclear bombs.

The latest iteration of its liquid-fuelled Khorramshahr ballistic missile at a time of ongoing, deep tensions with the West and certainly with Israel, and to a lesser degree the Sunni-Islamic countries it plans to dominate into submission with the threat of its attainment of the means to destroy them as well as Israel, is telling enough. The technologically advanced boasts themselves are a form of terrorism it employs to ensure its adversaries in the region are kept in check. Iran's recent detente with Saudi Arabia, its closest adversary next to Israel is no guarantee that the Saudi oilfields will not be attacked again by Iran's proxy Houthis in Yemen.

The Khorramshahr-4 was placed on proud display in Tehran, the missile on a truck-mounted launcher. A missile that Iran's defence minister assured those present, including journalists, that launch could be prepared within a short period. Poised and ready-to-go. The missile described with a 2,000-kilometre range, and a 1,500 kilogram warhead. Undated video footage was released which purportedly showed the missile during a successful launch.

Of Iran's ballistic missile fleet, the Khorramshahr possesses the heaviest payload which may have been designed to keep the weapon under a 2,000km range limit, some analysts feel. Placing most of the Mideast in its range, and falling just short of Western Europe. Named after an Iranian city where heavy fighting took place between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, there is much symbolism in naming the missile Khorramshahr. Just as the missile, called Kheibar is heavily symbolically named in reference to the 7th century Jewish fortress that fell to Islamic conquest within an area where Saudi Arabia now sits.

 

In staging that is a continuum of symbolism, so heavily employed by Tehran, a miniature of Jerusalem's golden Dome of the Rock sitting on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound which squats on a much earlier Judaic sacred site of the two iterations of the Temple of Solomon, the Temple Mount, was placed next to the mobile missile launcher.

 

Viewing Israel as its arch-enemy, Tehran has been actively and visibly inciting to violence the terrorist groups that are its proxies; Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, along with the Gaza-governing Hamas, all of whom were created for the express purpose of destroying the presence of a Jewish state on a geography that Islam conquered and where land sacrosanct to Islam theologically considers the presence of another religion forbidden. 

That the geography in question is historically linked to Judaism, and Israel is located on part of its ancestral homeland, is entirely irrelevant to fundamentalist Islamic states who regard the presence of a Jewish state to represent an assault on Islam itself. The inexhaustible supply of weaponry emanating from Iran to supply terrorist groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Gaza is an assurance that peace will not come easily to the region. 

It is a region, moreover, that has always been and likely always will be at war with itself. Without the presence of Israel in their midst, the tribal and sectarian violence that destroyed Lebanon and led to the deaths of a half-million Syrians would still fester and carry on. Groups like the Islamic State will always surface to create deadly chaos, creating bloodbaths between Muslims and victimizing minority religious and ethnic groups deprived of their human rights. 

The new Khorramshahr with its updated technology would be capable of reaching Israel from Iran. But then, when Iraq was invaded by a Western alliance after its sweep into and claim of Kuwait as Iraqi territory, missiles were sent by Saddam Hussein into Israel at that time, too. The uneasy tensions between Iran and Israel have mounted steadily of late, with Iran's threats of destroying Israel, giving the Jewish State good reason to destroy Iran's nuclear program before it has a chance to deploy.

 

A new surface-to-surface 4th generation Khorramshahr ballistic missile called Khaibar with a range of 2,000 km is launched at an undisclosed location in Iran, in this picture obtained on May 25, 2023.

(photo credit: IRANIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY/WANA/VIA REUTERS)