In a surprise, the armed forces last Wednesday allowed film to be broadcast showing an immense parking lot of truck-mounted missiles tucked deep into a mountainside.
The point conveyed in the broadcast to the Iranian public was that the missiles formed an impregnable defense the Islamic Republic could resort to if the country’s enemies “make a mistake” and attack Iran.
Some Western military analysts questioned that logic, saying the buried missile parking lot would just become the first target of an attack. “All you have to do is send one bomb into the door in the mountainside, collapsing the entrance and blocking all those trucks and missiles inside,” one analyst told the Iran Times. “The whole point of truck-mounted missiles is that you disperse them all over the countryside. You never park them together where they form a beautiful target.”
Saddam Hussein spread his truck-mounted Scud missiles around the Iraqi desert before the Americans attacked in 1991 and the US Air Force admitted it never found a single one.
Iran could drive its truck-mounted missiles into the desert as well. But the narration in the broadcast indicated the missiles would be taken out of their hiding place only after an American attack and used in retaliation. The implication was that the deep tunnel hiding place was to keep them safe from a pre-emptive American attack, which it would not do.
Many analysts, however, thought there was another and more important point to the broadcast—responding to hardline critics who have said the new agreement with the West will impede Iran’s missile program, which is portrayed to the Iranian public as Iran’s first line of defense.
Three days earlier, the military showed video of a brand new Emad missile being launched in a test.
The two revelations in the same week seemed aimed at convincing the public and hardliners that the regime is pushing ahead with its missile program at full speed.
The video of the buried missile parking lot was aired the day after the Majlis approved the new nuclear agreement with the Big Six.
What impressed viewers of the footage was the massive size of the tunnel parking lot. It was about three lanes wide and more than double the height of the trucks with the missiles mounted on them. No one explained why such an immense tunnel was built.
The tunnel was also straight as an arrow. Military specialists said it ought to zigzag so an explosion inside the tunnel would take out fewer of the trucks and missiles.
The broadcast spoke of similar tunnels being built in every one of Iran’s 31 provinces. Only one site was shown in the video. It was comprised of more than one tunnel stretching out in straight lines as far as could be seen in the camera view.
Brigadier General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Pasdar aerospace forces, which comprises Iran’s long-range missile units, said the tunnels were buried at a depth of 500 meters (1,600 feet or a third of a mile). However, it seemed unlikely the missile trucks would need to be driven up a ramp 500 meters high to get out of the tunnels. More likely, the tunnels were drilled into the sides of mountains and the 500-meter figure described the tunnel’s deepest point under a mountain—or was just an imaginative figure.
The Pasdar website quoted Hajizadeh as saying, “The Islamic Republic’s long-range missile bases are stationed and ready under the high mountains in all the country’s provinces and cities.”
Referring to US rhetoric, Hajizadeh said, “Those who pin their hopes on ‘options on the table’ should take a look at the Islamic Republic’s options under the table.”
He said Iran will not start any war but, “if enemies make a mistake, our missile bases will erupt like volcanoes from the depths of the earth.”
The video shown on state television came complete with a dramatic Hollywood-style musical track. It was the theme song from a shoot-‘em-up video game—the kind the Islamic Republic regularly criticizes as an example of America’s penchant for violence—titled, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II.”
The missiles seen on the trucks were the Ghadr and Sejjil.
But Hajizadeh said Iran is planning to replace all its existing long-range missiles with “new and more advanced” versions starting in the next Persian year.
Hajizadeh said, “We do not feel any need to increase the range of our missiles as the enemies’ targets are fully within the range of our missiles.” The greatest claimed range for an Iranian missile is 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles), which takes in all of the Middle East—including all of Israel—southern Russia, but only a small part of Europe in the Balkans.
Iranian military officers sometimes talk about boosting the range of Iran’s missiles, but more senior people seem concerned that that might prompt the United States to attack and, therefore, regularly deny any plan to increase range. What the real intent is remains obscure.