‘Iran now one of world’s top six missile powers’

TEHRAN, June 9 (MNA) -- Iran is now the fifth or sixth greatest military power in the world in terms of missile technology, according to Iranian Assistant Defense Minister Ali Shamshiri. “Due to the blessing of the Islamic Revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now the fifth or sixth greatest missile power in the world,” Shamshiri said at a ceremony honoring martyrs of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war held in the city of Shahr-e Kord late on Thursday. “Today, from a defense perspective, the Islamic Republic is really in a superior position,” he added. Iran’s progress in missile technology and aerospace technology has come as a surprise to the West. In July 2011, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Aerospace Division, announced that Iran had fired two long-range missiles into the Indian Ocean. The missiles, with a range of 1900 kilometers, were fired from the Semnan desert in northern Iran to their targets in the Indian Ocean near the Sea of Oman, Hajizadeh said. In addition, the Iranian Space Agency director announced in early May that Iran is working on a project to send living creatures into space. On June 2, Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi announced that Iran is building a new space center, which will be named after Imam Khomeini, for launching domestically manufactured satellites into space.