Iran Showcases Military Might on Army Day

Date: 19 April 2019 - 22:07

News ID: ۶۵۰۲۳

TEHRAN (Dispatches) — Iran showcased its domestically made fighter jets by flying the aircraft over Tehran during a military parade Thursday marking National Army Day as the country grapples with U.S. sanctions and the Trump administration’s recent terrorism designation of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).
TV footage showed the aircraft performing during the parade, including the latest all-Iranian fighter jet dubbed Kowsar, which in Islamic meaning refers to a river in paradise and is also the title of a chapter in the Muslim holy book, the Qur’an.
The United States reimposed sanctions on Iran, including on its energy sector, last November, after President Donald Trump pulled out of the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.
The twin-seated Kowsar — modeled after American F-5 fighter jet — was inaugurated in 2018, when the TV aired images of President Hassan Rouhani briefly sitting in the plane’s cockpit inside a hangar before the ceremony.
The parade also showcased the Saegheh, or "Thunderbolt,” another domestically built fighter in Iran’s air force, which already has U.S.-made F-4, F-5 as well as F-14 fighter jets and also Russian-made Sukhoi aircraft in service.
During Thursday's event, the air force also paraded Iranian battlefield personnel carriers, machine guns, tanks, transport vehicles and Iranian-made Talash as well as Russian-made S-300 missile systems.
Rouhani reviewed the parade, flanked by several IRGC commanders, and offered praise for both the army and the guard forces.
"The Army has always been beside the Iranian nation and the Islamic Revolution, making sacrifice to secure our territorial integrity and ensure Iran's independence," Rouhani also said.
The U.S. terrorism designation for the IRGC formally took effect on Monday — a move meant to increase pressure on Iran.
It prompted Iranian lawmakers a day later to overwhelmingly approve a bill labeling U.S. forces in the Middle East as terrorist and labeling America a "supporter of terrorism."
The IRGC’s designation — the first-ever for an entire division of another government — adds another layer of sanctions to the powerful popular force and makes it a crime under U.S. jurisdiction to provide it with material support.
Rouhani described the designation as "abhorrent,” emphasizing that "insulting the IRGC is an insult to all Iranian Armed Forces, and an insult to the great Iranian nation.”
After the blacklisting, all Iranians stood in unison by the IRGC, he said, adding they will continue to stand by the force because the Guards have always been and will remain at the nation’s side.
He also said Iran’s armed forces do not pose any threat against regional nations and their national interests, but they "stand against invaders.”
The president further warned that the Zionist regime as well as the U.S. and its allies do not favor stability, security, integrity and brotherhood in the region.
"The region’s nations have lived alongside each other for centuries and never had a problem... If there is a problem, it is caused by others,” Rouhani said, calling on the regional nations to stand united in the face of aggressors.
The crimes being committed by the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and other countries have brought nothing other than misery, agony and carnage to the region, Rouhani said.
The president also said the U.S. is angry with Iran’s armed forces, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, Iraq’s Hashd al-Sha’abi fighters and Yemen’s Ansarullah due to their resistance against American conspiracies.
"The Americans and their stooges in the region and the Zionist regime could not imagine that regional nations with the help of Iran, its armed forces and the IRGC could annihilate all their proxies and terrorists in the Middle East,” he said.