After the first round of tests on Tuesday, U.S. officials suggested the action may have violated a United Nations resolution and said they would raise the issue at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
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He stressed that Iran would not fire the missiles in anger or start a war with Israel.
Iran’s foreign ministry insisted on Thursday that the missile tests carried out by the country’s Revolutionary Guard this week do not violate Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers or a U.N. Security Council resolution.
Representative Ed Royce, the Republican chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, said: “Iran is making a mockery of President Obama’s vow to confront Iran’s unsafe and illicit acts”.
Iran’s IRGC said the missiles tested on Wednesday were designed with Israel in mind. “If in fact they break the deal, we will act.” .
On Wednesday, Iran fired two Qadr-H and Qadr-F precision missiles fired from launcher trucks tucked in a mountain range in northern Iran, hitting targets about 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) away in the southeastern Makran area, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said.
However, Ansari said the test-firing “did not defy the Security Council resolution” and added that Iran will continue its missile program. Iran has threatened to destroy Israel in the past. That phrase–that Israel must, should, or will be wiped out–has been used and said, many, many times by Iranian leaders, popularized by an ayatollah who died in the late 1980s.
JCPOA, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, is the formal title of a deal reached with major world powers on Iran’s nuclear programme, under which sanctions against Tehran were lifted, Xinhua news agency reported. He did not have additional details about the call. “The sanctions helped Iran develop its missile programme”, Brigadier-General Hossein Salami, deputy commander of the IRGC, was quoted as saying by Fars. Iran has the largest stockpile of ballistic missiles in the Middle East, and is the main military threat to Gulf Arab countries, as well as USA forces stationed in the region. But since the deal was reached, hard-liners in the military have made several shows of strength.
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US State Department spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday that if the latest missile tests were confirmed “then we’ll have every intention of raising the matter to the UN Security Council ” .
