TEHRAN // Iran used its annual Army Day parade on Sunday to showcase parts of a long-awaited air defence system ordered from Russia, a move likely to irk critics of the arms deal.
The S-300 system has been on order since 2007 but Russia postponed the sale three years later after the UN Security Council passed a resolution relating to Iran’s nuclear programme.
A deal between Iran and six world powers over its nuclear activities which lifted sanctions in January removed the barriers to delivery but the fully operational system is still awaited.
Every year, Iran’s armed forces hold parades across the country to mark Army Day.
In a ceremony in Tehran, broadcast live on state television, trucks carrying the missiles drove past a podium where president Hassan Rouhani and military commanders were standing. Soldiers also marched passed the podium and fighter jets and bombers took part in an air display.
“The power of our armed forces is not aimed at any of our neighbours ... Its purpose is to defend Islamic Iran and act as an active deterrent,” Mr Rouhani was quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA, in a speech at the ceremony.
Russia delivered the first part of the S-300 missile defence system to Iran last week, one of the most advanced systems of its kind that can engage multiple aircraft and ballistic missiles around 150km away.
Israel and the United States have hit out at the sale, which is seen as a means for Russia to maintain influence in the Middle East.
Iran and Russia are also in talks on a sale of the Sukhoi SU-30 fighter, another proposal criticised by the US. Iran’s current air force fleet dates from the pre-revolutionary era of the Shah.
Russia has said it cancelled a contract to deliver S-300s to Iran in 2010 under pressure from the West. President Vladimir Putin lifted the ban in April 2015, after an interim agreement that paved the way for the full nuclear deal with Iran in July that ended international sanctions.
Since then, Iran has upset Washington by carrying out four ballistic missile tests, which the US and its European allies said were in defiance of the United Nations resolution adopted in July.
The upgrading of Iran’s military following the nuclear deal has also alarmed Saudi Arabia, Tehran’s regional rival.
Riyadh routinely accuses Iran of interfering in Arab countries.
Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran in January after a row broke out over Riyadh’s execution of Shiite cleric and activist Nimr Al Nimr.
Angry Iranian mobs stormed and set fire to Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Tehran and its mission in Mashhad, Iran’s second city.
The attacks were immediately condemned by Mr Rouhani and, a few weeks later, by the Islamic republic’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
* Agence France-Presse and Reuters