Iran rolls out new underground missile depot for nuclear-capable Emads

Special to WorldTribune.com

Iran on Jan. 5 announced a new underground missile depot in which nuclear-capable Emad missiles are stored.

In video footage on state television, speaker of Iranian parliament Ali Larijani inaugurates the depot that is run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). It is the second such facility revealed in recent months.

A screen grab from Iranian TV shows Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani touring a second underground storage facility for ballistic missiles. /YouTube
A screen grab from Iranian TV shows Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani, center, touring a second underground storage facility for ballistic missiles. /YouTube

Larijani promised the IRGC that parliament would significantly increase the budget for Iran’s missile program.

Teheran’s vow to enhance its missile program and the move to publicize the missile depot are seen as a defiant slap at the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama which plans to lift nearly all sanctions on Iran under the nuclear agreement.

The U.S. has said that the precision-guided Emad, which Iran tested in October, would be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, a violation of UN sanctions on Teheran’s missile program.

In October, IRGC Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami said the missile depot revealed at that time “was one of our oldest stockpiles and we haven’t yet shown our modern missile depots, where missiles with big cross sections have been stockpiled.”

In November, Brig. Gen. Hassan Karimpour, a senior adviser to the IRGC Quds Force responsible for covert terror operations abroad, said Iran has 14 missile depots ranging from 30 to 500 meters (100 to 1,640 feet) in depth, spread all around Iran and featuring automatic launchers.

“Any country that dares to attack Iran will be riddled with missiles fired from these depots in large numbers automatically,” Karimpour said.

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