TEHRAN – The IRGC Navy chief announced on Tuesday that during the Shah regime Iran’s most advanced missile was Harpoon that its range was just 40 kilometer and even that was run by foreign military advisors but today “we are building missiles ranging from 10 to 1000 kilometers for defending the Persian Gulf.”

Rear Admiral Alireza Tangsiri also said the “enemy has realized what capabilities we have and (therefore) wants to halt our progress.”

Iran is now quite self-sufficient in producing weapons, he added.

Tangsiri also said the forces under his command has carried out every task that it has been assigned to.

For example, he said, an Iranian oil tanker was seized by a country and Iran took the issue to the court but the court did not vote for its release.

Even after they unloaded its oil, they refused to hand over the tanker to Iran, he added. In such a situation the IRGC Navy seized a tanker that was 240 meters long with a height of 21 meters and moved it to Bandar Abbas port and they (Americans) were searching for it for four days, he explained.  

Tanker was just two miles away from an American warship but they did not realize its confiscation, he explained.

“They were surprised by this operation,” he added.

The admiral did not mention the name the country that seized the Iranian oil tanker and neither the one the Iran seized in response. But apparently the admiral was referring to the seizure of the Iranian oil tanker by Greece in April on the orders of the U.S.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the admiral said whenever Iranian drones fly over American warships, they plead Iran to leave the area by claiming that they are in international waters but “we say that there is no international water in the Persian Gulf.”

He added, “Half of them (Persian Gulf waters) are our territorial waters and the other half are for the other countries (those on the southern shores of the Persian Gulf).”

 Iran has mastered all modern military technologies

On Tuesday, the IRGC chief Hossein Salami also told a congress on the status of science and technology during the Sacred Defense that Iran has mastered all modern technologies in military field.

The Sacred Defense refers to Iran’s resistance against the Invading army of Saddam Hussein in the 1980s.

Major General Salami said Iran can say with certainty that it has acquired all modern military technologies with reliance on the knowledge and insight of its own people, Tasnim reported.

Such technologies have been employed by all military units, he said, adding, “We have accumulated power to defeat the enemy.”

Commenting on the wars of the modern age, the general said that surprising the enemy today hinges on the technologies which are beyond the enemy’s calculation and with which the foes have no prior experience of confrontation.

In May 2020, the senior general warned enemies against any military adventurism against Iran, stressing that a major part of the Islamic Republic’s maritime power is “unknown” to others.

He also ruled out the possibility of a war against Iran, saying the enemy has become disappointed with military action on the Islamic Republic.