"The US bases around us are within our reach and are easy meat for us,”
Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh said in a televised interview on Wednesday
night.
He pointed to the US’ Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Al Dhafra Air Base in the UAE,
and Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan, saying the bases used to be threats to
Iran but are now "opportunities."
The US aircraft carriers in the Sea of Oman, with 40 to 50 fighter jets and
6,000 military personnel, are now within the reach of Iran’s ballistic missiles,
which have pinpoint accuracy and a range of 700 km, he added.
General Hajizadeh also referred to the Islamic Republic’s drone intelligence,
saying Iran now knows in which hangar of the Kandahar Airfield the RQ-170
Sentinel -- a US unmanned aerial vehicle Iran took control of about seven years
ago -- had been deployed.
Iran grounded the drone in December 2011 using electronic warfare techniques, as
the stealth aircraft was flying over the Iranian city of Kashmar near the Afghan
border.
According to the IRGC Aerospace commander, Iran used the reverse-engineered
version of the RQ-170 drone to target Daesh positions in Syria and Iraq.
Iran currently possesses the biggest collection of captured or downed American
and Israeli drones, including the US' MQ1, MQ9, Shadow, ScanEagle, and RQ-170 as
well as the Israeli regime's Hermes, Hajizadeh added.
The Israeli drone was intercepted and shot down in October 2014 by the IRGC
forces on its way to the Natanz nuclear facility in the central Isfahan
province.
In the field of unmanned aerial vehicles, Iran is now one of the world’s top
four or five countries, and the top drone power in the region, General Hajizadeh
said.
"The Iranian-made Shahed-129 drone, for example, had round-the-clock flights
over terrorists’ positions in Syria and Iraq, and its services were also used by
the Syrian army, the Russians, the Hezbollah forces, and others,” he added.
Iran's UAV program has expanded in recent years with more than a dozen models
operating for a variety of functions ranging from surveillance to intelligence
gathering, carrying bombs and Kamikaze operations.
They have been playing a significant role in the fight against Takfiri
terrorists as well as monitoring US warships in the Persian Gulf.
Source:PressTV