The parade outside the capital Tehran marked the 27th anniversary of the Iraqi invasion of Iran that sparked the bloody 1980-88 war. It comes as the U.S. and its European allies continue discussing a third round of U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran over its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment. It also comes days before the hard-line Iranian president is to address the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
"Those (countries) who assume that decaying methods such as psychological war, political propaganda and the so-called economic sanctions would work and prevent Iran's fast drive toward progress are mistaken," Ahmadinejad said.
Iran launched an arms development program during its war with Iraq to compensate for a U.S. weapons embargo. Since 1992, Iran has produced its own jet fighters, torpedoes, radar-avoiding missiles, tanks and armored personnel carriers. Many such weapons were on display at the parade.
Some of the trucks carrying Iranian missiles were painted at the back with popular slogans such as "Down with the U.S." and "Down with Israel." The parade also featured flights by two of Iran's new domestically manufactured fighter jets, known as the Saegheh, which means lightning in Farsi.
This is for show. Iran believes their real security lies not in their facade of conventional military power, but in the use of terror and nuclear weapons.
It would be in our long term interest to demonstrate that no state pursuing such a strategy will survive or prosper.
Iran knows that Iraq fought Iran to a draw in the Iran-Iraq War for eight years (and earned a psychological win, by knocking the Iranians about at the end of the war) while we rapidly dismantled the Iraqi military twice in 1991 and 2003. In their sane moments, the Iranians know they don't want to tangle with us.
Iran under the mullahs has few sane moments.
