DUBAI: Iran conducted air defence exercises on Saturday as the country braces for more friction with Israel and the United States under incoming US president Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
The war games take place as Iranian leaders face the risk that Trump could empower Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Iran\u2019s nuclear sites, while further tightening US sanctions on its oil industry through his \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn these exercises,…defence systems will practise the fight against air, missile and electronic warfare threats in real battlefield conditions… to protect the country\u2019s skies and sensitive and vital areas,\u201d Iranian state television said.<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s drills are part of two-months-long exercises launched on Jan 4 which have already included war games in which the elite Revolutionary Guards defended key nuclear installations in Natanz against mock attacks by missiles and drones, state media said.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s military has said it was using new drones and missiles in the exercises and released footage of a new underground \u201cmissile city\u201d being visited by Guards commander-in-chief Maj Gen Hossein Salami. Salami warned, in a speech carried by state TV, about a \u201cfalse sense of delight\u201d among Iran\u2019s enemies, saying Iran and particularly its missile forces were stronger than ever.<\/p>\n
While Iranian officials have downplayed Iran\u2019s setbacks, an Iranian general, Behrouz Esbati, who was reportedly based in Syria, said in a speech circulated on social media that Iran had \u201cbadly lost\u201d in Syria.<\/p>\n
Trump in 2018 withdrew from a deal struck by his predecessor Barack Obama in 2015 in which Iran agreed to curb uranium enrichment, which can yield material for nuclear weapons, in return for the relaxation of US and UN economic sanctions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DUBAI: Iran conducted air defence exercises on Saturday as the country braces for more friction with Israel and the United States under incoming US president Donald Trump. The war games take place as Iranian leaders face the risk that Trump could empower Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Iran\u2019s nuclear sites, while further tightening […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4610,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4609"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4611,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4609\/revisions\/4611"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}