Iran unveils ‘its first hypersonic ballistic missile’ which ‘can bypass Israel’s Iron Dome’
- Iran says hypersonic missile is capable of travelling at five times speed of sound
Iran presented what officials described as its first domestically-made hypersonic ballistic missile on Tuesday, the official IRNA news agency reported, an announcement likely to heighten Western concerns about Tehran’s missile capabilities.
Iranian state media published pictures of the missile named Fattah – or ‘Conqueror’ in Farsi – at a ceremony attended by President Ebrahim Rahisi and commanders of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps.
‘The precision-guided Fattah hypersonic missile has a range of 1,400 km (870 miles) and it is capable of penetrating all defence shields,’ Amirali Hajizadeh, the head of the Guards’ aerospace force, was quoted as saying by Iranian state media.
Hypersonic missiles can fly at least five times faster than the speed of sound and on a complex trajectory, which makes them difficult to intercept.
Last year, the Islamic Republic said it had built a hypersonic ballistic missile which can manoeuvre in and out of the atmosphere.
Iran presented what officials described as its first domestically-made hypersonic ballistic missile on Tuesday (pictured)
Iranian state media published pictures of the missile named Fattah – or ‘Conqueror’ in Farsi – at a ceremony attended by President Ebrahim Rahisi and commanders of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps
Iran presented what officials described as its first domestically-made hypersonic ballistic missile on Tuesday
State TV said Iran’s Fattah missile can target ‘the enemy’s advanced anti-missile systems and is a big generational leap in the field of missiles’, without providing evidence to support the claim.
‘It can bypass the most advanced anti-ballistic missile systems of the United States and the Zionist regime, including Israel’s Iron Dome,’ Iran’s state TV said.
Fattah’s top speed reached mach 14 levels (15,000km/h), it added.
Hypersonic weapons, which fly at speeds in excess of Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound, could pose crucial challenges to missile defense systems because of their speed and maneuverability.
Despite U.S. and European opposition, the Islamic Republic has said it will further develop its defensive missile programme. However, Western military analysts say Iran sometimes exaggerates its missile capabilities.
In November, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh of the Revolutionary Guard claimed that Iran had created a hypersonic missile, without offering evidence to support it.
That claim came during the nationwide protests that followed the September death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after her arrest by the country’s morality police.
And last month, Iran claimed it had successfully test-launched a ballistic missile with a potential 2,000-km range.
At the time, state TV broadcast a few seconds of footage of what it said was the launch of an upgraded version of Iran’s Khoramshahr 4 ballistic missile with a range of 2,000 km (1,243 miles) and able to carry a 1,500-kg (3,300-pound) warhead.
Pictured: A fourth-generation Khorramshahr ballistic missile being test-launched at an undisclosed location in Iran in May
Last month, Iran claimed it had successfully test-launched a ballistic missile with a potential 2,000-km range (pictured)
The Khorramshahr-4 is named after an Iranian city that was the scene of heavy fighting during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. Iraq seized the city in the oil-rich southwestern province of Khuzestan at the start of the war, but Iran retook it over a year later.
Iran, which has one of the biggest missile programmes in the Middle East, says its weapons are capable of reaching the bases of arch-foes Israel and the United States in the region.
Concerns about Iran’s ballistic missiles contributed to then-U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision in 2018 to ditch Tehran’s 2015 nuclear pact with six major powers.
Trump reimposed U.S. sanctions on Iran after exiting the nuclear pact, leading Tehran to resume previously banned nuclear work and reviving U.S., European and Israeli fears that Iran may seek an atomic bomb. Iran has consistently denied any such ambition.
Indirect talks between Tehran and U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration to salvage the nuclear deal have stalled since last September.
Israel, which the Islamic Republic refuses to recognise, opposes efforts by world powers to revive Tehran’s nuclear deal and has long threatened military action if diplomacy fails.
China is believed to be pursuing the weapons, as is America. Russia claims to already be fielding the weapons and has said it used them on the battlefield in Ukraine.
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