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Iran claims its first warship-launched missile successfully destroyed mock Israeli airbase

The IRGC simulated an attack on the Palmachim base, where the most advanced F-35 stealth fighters are housed.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

In a blatant warning to Israel, Iranian television on Tuesday showed off a simulation of an attack on a major IAF airbase that allegedly successfully used sea-based ballistic missiles for the first time.

The target, according to the report translated by the Middle East Media and Research Institute (MEMRI), was the Palmachim base where Israel’s most advanced F-35 stealth fighters are housed.

A ship of Iran’s second set of armed forces, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), launched “for the first time” from the Sea of Oman two missiles “with a range of at least 1,700 kilometers, and container launchers that conceal the missile[s], and prevent [their] detection prior to the launch” at a site in Iran’s central desert.

“This new achievement increases the range of our naval influence and power to any desired location, because our ocean-traversing warships can be at any point in the oceans,” said IRGC head Hossein Salami. “There will be no safe place for any power that wants to create insecurity for us.”

These were newly modified missiles that now have increased range and precision, said the translated report, which claimed that the projectiles “hit the targets with an accuracy of less than 4 meters,” proving that their real targets, the much larger “hangars holding those [F-35] warplanes,” are vulnerable.

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Land-based missiles were also fired at the mock base during the simulation, which was publicized as part of the IRGC celebration of “Guards Day,” the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution 45 years ago.

This is an example, said the report, of “what the IRCG can do against any target, in a hybrid operation from sea and land, if Iran’s territory is attacked.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last month that Israel is attacking Iran constantly, albeit through its current war on Tehran’s terror proxies. It is “the head of the octopus and you see its tentacles all around from the Houthis to Hizbollah to Hamas,” he said in a speech at Palmachim.

While heavily involved against Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel has taken a backseat in the U.S.-led punishment of Houthi terrorists who have launched missiles at cargo ships traveling towards the Suez Canal, in an effort to support Hamas, they say, by threatening international shipping.

Iran has refrained from joining a frontal assault on Israel, and Israel has held back from attacking Iran’s mainland as well, although Netanyahu has always threatened a military option to defeat Tehran’s nuclear threat, which is still growing, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.