Iranian Army Readying to Unveil 2 Home-Made Military Equipment

Iranian Ground Force Commander Lieutenant General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan announced on Wednesday that his force will soon unveil two new military products.
“Two new achievements are on the agenda of this Force”, Pourdastan said, adding that his forces have completed the phase of studies and designing of a cannoned personnel-carrier and a 23mm sniper rifle, and are now building them.

Elsewhere, he referred to the so-called US-led coalition formed to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and said, “The Americans are the pioneers of this coalition and feel that the ISIL isn’t efficient anymore and therefore, they want to be present in the region in another form.”

On cooperation between Iran and Iraq in fighting terrorism, Pourdastan said, “We have cooperation with Iraq in training them and providing them with our experiences but we don’t have direct deployment there.”

In relevant remarks on Monday, Pourdastan stressed full security at the country’s borders, and said his forces were monitoring all moves along the borders and would give a crushing and rigid response to the ISIL if the terrorist group ever dares to pose a threat to Iran.

“Thanks God, the Ground Force enjoys a satisfactory level of preparedness to defend the country’s borders today,” General Pourdastan told reporters on the sidelines of the annual military parades in Tehran yesterday.

He noted that the Iranian Army monitors all moves near the country’s borders, and said that his forces would crush the ISIL terrorists inside Iraq if the Takfiri terrorist group dares to make a move against Iran.

“This is the capability of the Iranian Ground Force and it shows we enjoy the required level of preparedness to confront all threats,” he added.

Yet, General Pourdastan underlined that the ISIL was not considered a threat to Iran, and added, “But Iran has no problem for confronting this terrorist group.”

Also on Monday, Iran’s Chief of Staff Major General Hassan Firouzabadi described the ISIL as a Frankenstein monster created through a media hype by the Zionists in a psychological operation to frighten the Muslim states and advance their goals, stressing that Iraq alone will be enough to annihilate the terrorist group.

“The ISIL is a dreadful creature which has been created through the psychological operations and hues and cries of the Zionist media,” Firouzabadi told reporters on the sidelines of military parades at the mausoleum of the Founder of the Islamic Republic, the Late Imam Khomeini, South of Tehran.

He said the ISIL was a monster just in the media, and not in reality, stressing that the Iraqi army and people enjoy the needed power and capability to confront and annihilate the ISIL by themselves.

“There is no need for any (foreign) military forces’ deployment in Iraq and you saw that the Iraqi people and army accompanied by religious leaders managed to make them withdraw.”

Asked if Iran had any independent plans to fight the ISIL, Firouzabadi said, “There is no need for the deployment of Iranian soldiers to fight the ISIL.”

He reminded the common borders of Iran and Iraq, and said Tehran was providing Baghdad with military consultations under the defense pacts that the two neighboring states had.