Iran has tested a Sayyad-2 anti-aircraft missile system that, defense officials said, will be deployed throughout the country in the near future, the Fars News Agency reported.
Despite a fresh round of sanctions placed on it last year by the United Nations, United States and the European Union, Iran continues to develop its military capability and nuclear program—and claims it is for peaceful purposes.
In the past, Iran launched a Sayyad-1 surface-to-air missile, which is capable of destroying targets at low and medium altitudes, the news agency reported.
Fars described the "upgraded version of the system" as having "higher precision, range and destruction power."
Iran has of late been issuing statements alluding to its increasing nuclear power capability.
It recently confirmed its capability of creating components that make centrifuges, the devises that can enrich uranium.
Dr. Mustafa al-Ani, a senior advisor and program director at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, told Al Arabiya that Iran’s quest to create an image of itself as a formidable power fuels its determination to further its nuclear ambitions, he added.
Iran also announced plans to construct more nuclear reactors for the purpose of medical research, according to state controlled Press TV.
"Iran plans to build four to five new reactors with a capacity of 10-20 megawatts in different provinces within the next few years to produce radio-medicine and perform research," Fereydoun Abbasi, head of Iran’s nuclear energy agency, said to the student news agency ISNA.
When asked how Iranians were advancing in nuclear sciences despite sanctions on it, Dr. al-Ani said that "the knowledge and the know-how of making parts for the centrifuges come from outside, Iranians do not have a blue print for its manufacturing."
He also added that Iran’s local nuclear manufacturing was still of low quality, but there are suspicions that the country could soon be able to produce P3 generation parts for centrifuges, which can lead to the production of nuclear weapons.
Israel has raised alarm bells about the Islamic republic gaining P3 generation parts.
Epharaim Kam, deputy head of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies and a former colonel in the research division of Israeli military intelligence, told The Jerusalem Post, that the Iranian scientists have moved from "primitive" first-generation uranium enrichment centrifuges, to "more advanced second- and third-generation."
Iran and the west share a contentious relationship. In the latest tit-for-tat "war," Iran has stopped refueling western passenger planes after its commercial planes bound to Europe were refused refueling there.
On Saturday, Iran also accused the US and Israel as being behind the computer worm Stuxnet, which hurt Iran’s nuclear program, according to state news agency IRNA.
"Investigations and studies show that the source of Stuxnet originates from America and the Zionist regime," the commander of the Iranian civil defense organization, Gholam Reza Jalali, said.