TEHRAN (The Thursday Times) — Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Tuesday unveiled what they described as a new underground missile city, releasing footage of tunnels lined with ballistic and cruise missiles and the trucks that launch them.
The facility belongs to the Aerospace Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which runs Iran’s long-range missile programme. Major General Ali Abdollahi, the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, and Brigadier General Seyyed Majid Mousavi, the Aerospace Force commander, toured the complex with other senior officers and reviewed the readiness of its missile units, according to Tasnim, a news agency affiliated with the Guards.
“Advanced missiles will surprise enemies with their battlefield impact,” Abdollahi said during the visit, the state-run Mehr news agency reported.
Iran did not say where the site is, how deep it lies or how many missiles it holds. Footage released by the Fars news agency, which is close to the Guards, and photographs from the Guards’ own media show commanders riding through a long, lit tunnel past rows of missile warheads on loading cradles, green launcher canisters and heavy transport trucks, under banners and portraits of Iranian commanders. None of it could be independently verified.
Missile production moved underground
The unveiling had been trailed three days earlier. At a press conference on Saturday marking IRGC Aerospace Force Week, the Guards’ spokesman, Brigadier General Hossein Mohebbi, said the force would show a new underground missile city along with other military achievements.
Mohebbi said the Aerospace Force had gone beyond underground storage and moved its missile and drone production lines from surface factories into what he called “missile production cities” deep below ground. He said Iran’s own expertise, its large territory and flexible factories would allow weapons manufacturing to carry on “even under heavy bombardment”.
He also said Iran had more capabilities that it would reveal as “major surprises” if there were a third round of confrontation with its enemies.
Iran’s underground missile cities
Iran has shown off underground missile bases several times since 2020, usually through carefully staged videos of tunnels packed with weapons. The sites are meant to protect its arsenal from air strikes and to signal that Iran can keep firing after an attack.
The Guards stressed production this time rather than storage alone, in line with Mohebbi’s remarks on Saturday. Iran did not say when the new complex was built or how it compares with the sites it has shown before.
