The Islamic Republic claims to have developed a brand-new missile that can evade American and Israeli defenses and thus solve the problem that embarrassed Iran last year when its two missile attacks on Israel managed to miss every target it aimed at.
The vast bulk of the missiles fired at Israel in April and October last year were either shot down or were too inaccurate to do any damage. In one case where the missiles got through, they were apparently aimed at the headquarters building of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. One missile landed a kilometer north of the building and the other a kilometer south. Both exploded in open areas, digging craters, but otherwise only damaging some nearby cars hit by debris.
Now, Iran says it has fixed the problem with its new solid-fueled Qasem Basir missile, which it says is maneuverable and can evade anti-missile defenses.
There are a few problems with this new claim.
First, the Islamic Republic had already claimed to have maneuverable missiles before its attacks on Iran last year.
Second, it now claims to have designed, developed, tested and to have in production a brand-new missile based on its experience in the attacks of last April and October. In other words, it has mastered extremely advanced technology in just 13 months, something it takes the Americans, Chinese, Russians and Europeans multiple years to accomplish.
Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh boasted, “No defense system—neither THAAD nor Patriot [both American-made]—is capable of intercepting the Qasem Basir.”
Unfortunately, the government helped the THAAD and Patriot operators do their job. The ministry posted on state media a video showing the missile tracking a target and forgot to black out information on the bottom of the video showing the “D” or drag coefficient of the missile, indicating how it was slowing down and helping the THAAD and Patriot operators to calibrate their equipment.
Iran said the new missile carries a 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) warhead, which is barely half the size of the 2,000-pound bombs Israel has been dropping like confetti on Gaza. Iran would have to build a huge number of expensive missiles to equal the punch Israel gets with a simple bomb.
