RFE/RL:
The Iranian military says it will keep conducting missile tests despite U.S. condemnation of them.
“Missile tests…are carried out for defense and the country’s deterrence, and we will continue this,” Brigadier-General Abolfazl Shekarchi, a spokesman for Iran’s armed forces, was quoted as saying by the semiofficial Tasnim news agency on December 2.
He said Iran will “continue to both develop and test missiles” and added that such activity “is outside the framework of [nuclear] negotiations and part of our national security, for which we will not ask any country’s permission.”
The statement comes one day after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemned what he described as Iran’s testing of a medium-range ballistic missile “capable of carrying multiple warheads.”
