Iranian state television has shared images of an underground missile base in an unprecedented broadcast.
The base is located 1,640 feet (500 meters) underground, according to BBC World journalist Mehrzad Kohanrouz. The first media images of a subterranean Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps rocket base come only three days after Iran tested a new precision-guided ballistic missile.
"The Emad missile is able to strike targets with a high level of precision" and destroy them, the state news agency IRNA quoted Hossein Dehghan, the Iranian defense minister, as saying.
The footage of the Iranian missile base shows long tunnels packed with missiles, hardware, and numerous Iranian soldiers. The tunnel shown on Iranian TV is only one of many such bases throughout Iran, Iranian Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the IRGC's aerospace division, said.
"The Islamic republic's long-range missile bases are stationed and ready under the high mountains in all the country's provinces and cities," Hajizadeh said, according to a translation from AFP.
The underground missile bases limit the ability of spy satellites to pinpoint the location of Iranian arms caches. They are also difficult to destroy from the air using most conventional weaponry.
Hajizadeh also boasted that while Iran was unwilling to start any wars itself, "If enemies make a mistake, missile bases will erupt like a volcano from the depth of earth."
The White House has said Iran's testing of the Emad missile most likely violated a UN Security Council Resolution and that it will "engage a strategy to try to disrupt continued progress of their ballistic missile program."
You can see the broadcast below:
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