Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday vowed to boost his country’s ballistic missile capabilities despite the United States withdrawing from a multilateral nuclear deal with Tehran in May, AFP reported.
“We will never decrease our defensive capabilities… we will increase them day by day,” Rouhani said at a military parade. “The fact that the missiles anger you shows they are our most effective weapons.”
Rouhani said US President Donald Trump will fail in his confrontation with Iran. “America will suffer the same fate as Saddam Hussein,” he said, according to Reuters. “Iran will not abandon its defensive weapons ... including its missiles that make America so angry.”
Around 600 vessels took part in the Gulf naval drill in Iran on Saturday. The US maintains a fleet in the Gulf that protects oil shipping routes.
Trump in May announced that he was pulling the US out of a Barack Obama-era nuclear agreement with Iran, calling it “decaying and rotten”. The US then said it will re-impose sanctions against Iran, and has asked some other countries to take similar action. Trump reimposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic last month.
Tehran has ballistic missiles, with a range of up to 3,500 kilometres, that could reach both US and Israel bases in the Middle East.
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