Iran army to stage wargames next week

The Iranian Army plans to stage massive wargames in the country’s Western province of Kermanshah next week, reported Fars News Agency.

The drills will be held on October 29-31 in Gilan-e Gharb district in Kermanshah, a senior Iranian Army commander, Saeed Arablou, said on Thursday. “This manoeuvre will be one of a kind and among the most spectacular drills ever held by the Iranian Army,” Brigadier General Saeed Arablou state, press tv reported.

Arablou stated that the drills aim to upgrade the combat abilities of the Army forces and display defence capabilities of its various divisions. Earlier, Iranian Basij (volunteer) forces staged massive wargames in Kermanshah on Monday.

Lieutenant Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General Hossein Salami, Commander of Kermanshah’s Corps Mohammad Nazar Azimi, Governor-General of Kermanshah Seyed Dadvash Hashemi as well as a number of senior provincial and military officials attended the ceremony to officially start the drills, codenamed Beitol-Moqaddas (Jerusalem).

Ten thousand Basji forces were present in the wargames underway in Tangeh Konesh region. The wargames were aimed at maintaining and strengthening defense and military preparedness of Basij units.

Meanwhile, The Iranian Foreign Ministry lashed out at the French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, for his “irresponsible” remarks about Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, cautioning him not to repeat the same mistakes former French officials made about Tehran by their radical positions.

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast dismissed the recent remarks by the French foreign minister on Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, and reiterated that such allegations, which have been made under political pressures, are “irresponsible”. The Islamic Republic of Iran considered France as an advocate of the role of international organisations and their affiliated institutions, but now it seems that the French government is moving away from its traditional stands in the international arena, he stressed on Wednesday.

How can the French foreign minister speak of the danger of Iran’s access to nuclear weapons while fully ignoring the inspections of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over the past years that have rejected Iran’s diversion from peaceful purposes,” Mehman-Parast asked. Mehman-Parast expressed the hope that Fabius would not repeat the mistakes of some former French officials who had adopted “radical and unrealistic” stands against Iran.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on October 21 that Iran looked to be on course to what he called as reaching its goal of producing nuclear weapons by mid-2013. Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry. Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down West’s calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment. daily times monitor