Navy chief: Iran to establish permanent base in Antarctica

"We have rights to Antarctica and we plan to raise the Iranian flag there and establish a permanent base," Navy Commander Rear Admiral Shahram Irani said, FARS news agency reports.

Iranian officials have previously talked about the need for a permanent station in Antarctica. For example, Managing Director of the Iranian National Institute for Oceanography (INIO) Vahid Chegini told Iranian media back in 2012 that there were plans for a permanent station at the South Pole within the following three years, a plan that has yet to materialize.

In a relevant development earlier this month, Iran’s naval forces took delivery of a number of long-range and precision-guided naval cruise missile, named "Abu Mahdi", whose command-and-control systems has been equipped with artificial intelligence.

The Iranian Navy and the Islamic Revolution Guards Corp (IRGC)'s Navy took delivery of the naval cruise missiles -- with a range of more than 1,000 km, significant destructive power and operational range -- in a ceremony attended by senior military officials as part of the plan to bolster the naval force’s combat power.

Iran's Defense Minister Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Ashtiani said during the ceremony that the Abu Mahdi cruise missile is capable of confronting electronic warfare and evading radar systems and has utilized artificial intelligence to chart its optimal flight path.

The domestically manufactured naval cruise missile would expand Iran’s naval defence coverage zone by several times and allow the navy units to broaden their operational range, Defense officials say.  

In August 2020, Iran unveiled two new missiles which named after top Iranian Commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani and his Iraqi trenchmate Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq's PMU, who were assassinated outside Baghdad’s international airport in a US raid in January 2020.

The projectile, known as the first long-range naval cruise missile, has distinguishing features in terms of precision strike, destructive power, bypassing maritime terrains and penetrating into the enemy’s air defense systems. It can be deployed in a short period of time, can choose among targets in the field and can streak at low altitudes for radar-evading maneuvers and alter its course and height in midair.