The Mehr news agency reported that Deputy Interior Minister Ali Abdollahi described the new automatic guns Monday as “intelligent monitoring systems” to enable Iran to control its borders.
He did not say how many such guns had been installed so far or how many would be deployed.
He also did not explain if they were intelligent enough to distinguish a drug runner trying to cross the border from a 10-year-old chasing after a soccer ball.
Neither was it explained how the Interior Ministry would prevent people coming up to the weapon from its rear and stealing it.
Abdollahi did assert that Iran has thus far sealed 60 to 65 percent of its eastern borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan.
No country is known to have installed automatic weapons on any border, although the Soviet Union used marked minefields placed between fences along part of its border as well as towers manned by armed border guards.
The United States has installed motion sensors along some remote border areas to detect anyone walking across the border, and that system did lead to the capture decades ago of a German Baader-Meinhof terrorist gang member trying to enter the US from Canada.
