Firepower show: A Zelzal (Earthquake) missile launching during yesterday’s Great Prophet military exercises by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. (AFP/Getty Images)
Convinced that President Obama is preparing the United States for a strategic retreat, the leaders of Iran’s Khomeinist regime have put their latest military hardware on show in support of their claim of domination in the Middle East.
In a four-day “firepower show” that started Sunday, the Revolutionary Guard — a parallel army — is simulating attacks on US bases and warships in the Persian Gulf. Code-named Great Prophet, the exercises have unveiled a new generation of medium-range missiles designed to hit Israel as well as US military assets in Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman.
The new weapons belong to the family of Shahab and Sejjil missiles developed with the help of North Korean, Chinese and Russian technology. The first generation of these missiles had a range of 75 miles. The new generation, just unveiled, has a range of 1,200 miles.
“The Zionist regime is within [750 miles] distance from us,” Gen. Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, Commander of the IRGC aerospace project, told the official news agency IRNA. “Thus, we are able to hit it [Israel] from deep within our own territory.”
Hajizadeh mocked the United States as “an empire in decline,” adding that it is Iran and not “an outside power” that must ensure the region’s security.
“The Americans have facilitated our task by building bases in surrounding countries,” Hajizadeh said. “Their bases are placed between [75 and 430 miles] from our missiles. We could hit all of them from many different directions.”
Attending the Great Prophet show were military delegations from 18 countries, including North Korea, China, Russia and Brazil.
Part of the exercises consisted of Iranian-made drones shooting down “attacking American” warplanes. According to Hajizadeh, the Russian “guests” were allowed to inspect and examine the drones and the aircraft they’d shot down over the Persian Gulf.
“We only regard the US and Israel as strategic enemies and do not feel threatened by any other country,” Hajizadeh said. “Thus, we have no need for longer-range missiles, although we have the technology to develop them.”
He also claimed that European nations need not worry about being attacked by Iran. “We do not regard the Europeans as enemies,” he said.
Broadcast live on Iran’s Arabic-language satellite-TV networks, the Great Prophet show is part of a broader propaganda effort by Tehran to advance the regime’s claim to being the new “regional superpower.”
The message being beamed to Arabs is simple: America is in retreat and can no longer pretend to protect its Middle East allies; the only power that can provide protection is the Islamic Republic. The Americans will go away, but the Iranians will always be there.
Tehran is especially anxious to prevent the emergence of a new alliance of democratic Arab countries to challenge the Khomeinist regime’s regional ambitions.
It is also trying to drive a wedge between Washington and its European allies before entering the next round of negotiations about its nuclear program. Here, too, the message is that, to protect their interests, the Europeans will have to reckon with Iran as the leading power in the Middle East.
The publicity given the Russian and Chinese military “guests” is designed to show that Moscow and Beijing already acknowledge Tehran as the dominant power in the Persian Gulf, marking the beginning of the end for Washington’s traditional position in the region.
The current tone of Tehran shows that the Islamic Republic leadership no longer worries about a possible US or Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Those fears peaked in 2008, then declined sharply with Obama’s election. Now the possibility of an Israeli attack is all but ruled out, while chances of an American strike are deemed only “a theoretical configuration.”