Iran Reiterates its Right to Self Defence - Will Abandon its Missile Program Only if West Denuclearise

Since the signing of the JCPOA nuclear deal in 2015, under which Iran agreed to inspections of its nuclear sites to ensure their peaceful purpose in return for a lifting of sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council, Tehran has come under immense pressure from the Western bloc to terminate if not allow Western supervision of its missile program. With Western aligned states in the Missile East spending tens of billions of dollars on defence annually, dwarfing Iran's own defence budget, an advanced ballistic missile program remains key to allowing Iran to retain some form of parity. Iran's disadvantage relative to its regional rivals is particularly significant considering both the extensive Western military support hostile for Arab Gulf states, as well as the vast nuclear arsenal of Israel, another close Western partner.

By pressing Iran to abandon its missile program, the Western bloc has sought a more favourable balance in the Middle East which would allow their allies to effectively wage a war against the Iranian military with minimal risk of retaliation. Indeed without its missiles, Iran would be left with little means to retaliate against an Israeli or Arab attack, let alone a joint military action which remains a possibility considering growing military cooperation between the two. With missile programs of their own and air fleets outmatching that of Iran many times over, Iran remains at a severe disadvantage which a ballistic missile arsenal remains the only effective means of offsetting - even if armed only with conventional rather than chemical or nuclear warheads. Iran has defended its right to ballistic missiles as a defensive measure, with President Hassan Rouhani stating in response to Western pressure: “We will negotiate with no one on our weapons," and noting that the country's arsenal “are defensive and are not designed to carry weapons of mass destruction, since we don’t have any.”

In the face of mounting Western pressure Tehran stated that it will consider negotiating over its program only after the U.S. and Europe dismantle their own nuclear arsenals. Iranian Armed Forces spokesman Masoud Jazayeri stated on March 4th: “The condition for negotiating Iran’s missiles is the destruction of the nuclear weapons and long-range missiles of the United States and Europe." The purpose of the statement was to emphasise the significant double standards in the Western bloc's demands, in that while they reserved the right not only to advanced medium range missile forces but also to intercontinental ballistic missile and even chemical and nuclear arms for themselves, they would deny Iran a far less destructive conventional medium range missile program for its own defence.