Iranian underground missile bases enable ‘surprise launches’

Iran may be able to fire its missiles from underground through surface vents.

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
Updated: OCTOBER 16, 2015 05:30
SOLDIERS OF the Revolutionary Guards Corps stand at attention in an underground missile facility recently revealed on Iranian state television. (photo credit: FARS)
SOLDIERS OF the Revolutionary Guards Corps stand at attention in an underground missile facility recently revealed on Iranian state television.
(photo credit: FARS)
An underground Iranian missile launch base unveiled in recent days enables the Islamic Republic to store and covertly fire surface-to-surface missiles, a senior Israeli defense expert said.
Tal Inbar, head of the Space Research Center at the Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies in Herzliya, spoke on Wednesday after Iranian state television released images of large caves storing long-range missiles on-board mobile launches. He described the underground facility, whose location is unknown, as a “complex system of enormous tunnels.”
These allow Iran to fire its missiles from underground, through surface vents.
“The cave system enables the Iranians to prepare their missiles for firing secretly, and to carry out a surprise missile barrage attack,” he warned.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps showed off the secret mountain side facility on the semi-official Fars TV, Sky News reported on Thursday morning.
The video showed “an extensive tunnel packed with medium- and long-range missiles and launcher units,” the British network said. “The Guard said the missiles were on their launch pads, ready to be fired in the event of an attack on the country.”
It also showed “what appear to be officers walking over flags of Israel and the United States painted on the floor,” according to the report.
Iran claimed the base “was one of hundreds in the country.”
“We have so many bases that [our enemies] cannot confront those bases, no matter how many bases they identify,” Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Guard’s aerospace branch, was quoted as saying.