Iran has revealed an underground missile bunker packed with bombs in footage broadcast on its state television network as a rousing message to its people.
The clip shows a long tunnel deep under the earth stuffed full of weapons, trucks and parts appearing to belong to the Qiam-1 ballistic missile system.
Outside the grand entrance to the bunker hang huge posters of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani.
The clip shows a long tunnel deep under the earth stuffed full of weapons (pictured), trucks and soldiers
The clip shows soldiers removing the casing from a part of weapon (pictured) using a motorised crane, before attaching it to the lower half of the bomb
Below it, sliding doors pull away and a ramp drops to allow access to the dimly-lit tunnel.
The footage cuts to soldiers removing the casing from part of a weapon using a motorised crane, before attaching it to the lower half of the bomb.
It is mounted on a trolley and moved to a cavernous area where it is winched up to point towards the sky.
Chaotic scenes then shows the missile fired, with the camera in the tunnel engulfed in flames and smoke.
Outside the grand entrance to the bunker hang huge posters of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani (pictured)
The vast tunnel network was shown on Iranian television in an apparent rousing message to its people
The missile is mounted on a trolley and moved to a cavernous area where it is winched up to point towards the sky
Chaotic footage shows a missile fired, with the camera in the tunnel engulfed in flames and smoke
An exterior shot – from the surface – sees the missile leave through a spherical hole in the ground before rocketing away from the desert location.
Today, Iran’s foreign ministry rejected accusations made at an ongoing summit of Muslim countries, after regional rival Saudi Arabia said Iran’s behaviour threatens regional stability and security.
A foreign ministry spokesman said the accusations were part of an ongoing program against Iran being pursued by the US and Israel, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.
Saudi Arabia has ‘continued to sow division between Islamic countries and in the region, which is the wish of the Zionist regime,’ foreign ministry spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi said.
Saudi King Salman ratchets up the rhetoric against Iran at the start of back-to-back Gulf and Arab summits in Mecca, condemned by Tehran as a bid to ‘sow division’ in the region to Israel’s advantage
Ibrahim al-Assaf originally made the comments early on Thursday at a meeting of foreign ministers of the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in Jiddah ahead of a series of summits in the kingdom.
Al-Assaf said the alleged sabotage of boats off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and a drone attack on a Saudi oil pipeline by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels required the region to ‘make more efforts to counter the terrorist acts of extremist and terrorist groups.’
Iran has denied being involved in the attacks, but Al-Assaf added: ‘We should confront it with all means of force and firmness.’
Norwegian oil tanker Andrea Victory, another of the four damaged boats, pictured with a large dent in its stern
But a US official claimed last month Iran used explosives to blow holes in four ships – including two Saudi tankers – anchored in the Persian Gulf.
Asked about the sabotage, which one tanker association suggested was caused by a ‘weapon’, US President Donald Trump warned that Tehran would ‘suffer greatly’ if it enraged Washington, predicting a ‘bad problem for Iran if something happens’.
It comes at a delicate time in relations between Iran and the West, with tensions between Washington and Tehran soaring this month over the US deploying an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers to the Persian Gulf over an unexplained threat.
The White House announced it was going to send the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group and the bombers to counter Tehran
A B-52H Stratofortress assigned to the 20th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron is seen through night vision coming in for a landing at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar earlier this month
Relations further soured on Wednesday when Supreme Leader Khamenei said his country would not negotiate on issues related to its military capabilities.
During a meeting with university professors, Khamenei said ‘Negotiations on defensive issues means that we give up our defensive capabilities.’
He said negotiating with the US would bring nothing but harm.
During a meeting with university professors, Supreme Leader Khamenei said ‘Negotiations on defensive issues means that we give up our defensive capabilities’
However, he did say Iran is not looking to acquire nuclear weapons ‘not because of the sanctions or America,’ but because nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islamic Sharia law.
The Iranians said they would restrict their nuclear program in the 2015 Iran Deal, but US President Donald Trump’s administration slammed the agreement because they said it did not prevent weapons development.
President Trump famously called it the ‘worst deal in history.’
And Iran later announced it was backing away from it, which had seen the country limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Iran has set a July 7 deadline for Europe to offer better terms to the unravelling nuclear deal, otherwise it will resume enrichment closer to weapons level.