Self-sufficiency in everything has long been an ideological goal of the Islamic Republic, which believes that if a country needs to import anything, it is therefore dependent on foreigners and not truly independent.
“Iran has reached full self-sufficiency in the field of defense industries,” Commander of the Iranian Army Ground Force, Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Purdastan, said in Birjand Tuesday.
“Today, we can powerfully claim that our defense industries are able to produce all the 
needs of the Armed Forces, including naval, ground and air equipment,” Purdastan said.
This is exposed as mere rhetoric by periodic photos that appear showing foreign equipment. For example, just a few months ago, the regime launched a new warship, the Jamaran, saying that everything on it was Iranian-made. But one of the publicity shots taken on the main deck clearly showed a Siemens label on one piece of equipment.
Purdastan stressed the Army’s high preparedness to repel potential enemy threats, and said, “Under present conditions, the Army is ready to confront any kind of ground, sea and air threat and nip it in the bud.”
Iranian military officials have long boasted that the country is exporting arms and military equipment to 40 countries, although the UN sanctions have barred countries from buying Iranian arms since 2007.
In other rhetorical flights last week, the chief of Pasdaran intelligence claimed to know that the United States has crafted nine long-term plans for tackling the Islamic Republic.
Addressing a gathering of Iran’s prosecutors in Tehran last Wednesday, Hossain Taeb, a cleric, said the Americans see present conditions in the Middle East, Europe, East Asia and Central Asia as major challenges to their plans for running the world in the 21st Century.
As regards US “plots” in the region, Taeb said, “They believe that the Persian Gulf is the [world’s] heart and they cannot continue to live if they fail to control this heart. They believe that creating a new Iran is a must for that control.”
The Pasdar official reported that the United States had compiled nine schemes for Iran, including two diplomatic, one containment, three military and three internal. He didn’t say how he knew this.
Regarding the US plots for Iran’s internal situation, Taeb said Americans established networks in Iran to infiltrate opposition groups in order to organize unrest after the June 2009 presidential elections, although, he said, the US plan eventually fell flat.