China and Iran, two countries that top President Trump’s enemies list, are pushing back against his tough talk this week with showy and provocative military drills.
Iran conducted military exercises and rolled out new weapons that its leaders said would help national defense, and China tested a new missile following Trump’s Twitter assault on Beijing’s expansion in the South China Sea.
Iran’s defense minister, Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehqan, displayed the country’s newest weapons, including a guided missile, a grenade launcher, a rifle and a pistol.
The arms would boost the military’s capabilities in individual combat and in air defense, he said, according to the Tasnim News Agency.
Iran on Saturday warned Washington against any hostile actions.
Iran conducts military exercise in response to Trump’s comments on enemies
“If the enemy makes a mistake our roaring missiles will hit their targets,” Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Aerospace Force, said during massive air defense drills, the state-owned Fars News Agency reported.
Iran also warned that if attacked, its missiles would target the U.S. 5th Fleet based in Bahrain, American installations in the Indian Ocean and the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.
“These points are all within the range of Iran’s missile systems, and they will be razed to the ground if the enemy makes a mistake,” Mojtaba Zonour, a member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission. “And only seven minutes is needed for the Iranian missile to hit Tel Aviv.”
The threats came after the Trump administration imposed sanctions Friday on 25 Iranian individuals and entities supporting the Revolutionary Guards’ ballistic missile program.
The sanctions were triggered by an Iranian ballistic missile test on Jan. 29 that the U.S. said violated a United Nations Security Council resolution that prohibits launching missiles capable of carrying a nuclear weapon.
Iran said the missile was not capable of carrying a nuclear weapon and that testing defensive weapons is its right.
