Iran unveils new Fattah II hypersonic missile

In the midst of an open war with Israel, Iran presents and flaunts before its supreme leader the new weapons with the idea of showing a great part of its military power before the main Israeli ally, the United States. 

Iran's Revolutionary Guard unveiled the second version of its hypersonic missile, the Fatah II, at an aerospace exhibition attended by Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran on Sunday. 

Iran's Revolutionary Guard unveiled the Fattah II, the second version of its hypersonic missile, at the Tehran Aerospace Exhibition on Sunday. According to the Iranian government's semi-official Mehr news agency, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has unveiled a hypersonic missile. 

Hypersonic weapons travel at five times the speed of sound and pose significant challenges to missile defence systems. Their speed and manoeuvrability make them more difficult to intercept than ballistic missiles. The Fattah II is a hypersonic (supersonic) glide-capable missile that is part of the hypersonic weapons range. 

Local media reported that the Fattah, a two-stage missile, has a range of 1,400 kilometres and a maximum speed of Mach 13 (about 16,000 kilometres per hour). Notably, as detailed in the Tasnim report, Fattah is armed with a spherical solid-fuel engine with adjustable nozzles that allows for variable manoeuvrability in and around the Earth's atmosphere. 

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also attended the event and unveiled several new drones, including one for the Gaza Strip. In a speech to SDF commanders who accompanied him on the trip, Khamenei praised the achievements of Iran's young army. Khamenei said: "Our young men have done great things in every scene they entered with energy and faith, and the traces of perseverance and faith were clearly revealed in this exhibition". 

Fattah II strengthens HGV-class hypersonic weapons capabilities and demonstrates Iran's technological advances in this field. This new missile puts the Islamic Republic in a select group of countries (only four in the world: the United States, Russia, China and India) capable of mastering the development and production of advanced hypersonic weapons. 

Iran blocks IAEA nuclear inspectors 

Tensions are rising. The standoff between Iran and Western powers is growing as Iran expels many of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors overseeing the country's nuclear energy programme. 

This underlines the urgent need for mass protests against Israel's war in Gaza to counter the military escalation against the ayatollahs' regime. There is speculation that the US attack on Iran and the war in the Gaza Strip could spread throughout the Middle East. 

"Iran's position is not only unprecedented, but also contradictory to the necessary cooperation," IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi also pointed to the stockpiles of highly enriched uranium that Iran has accumulated since 2018, when then US President Donald Trump unilaterally abandoned the 2015 UN (United Nations) backed Iran nuclear deal and imposed devastating economic sanctions on Iran. 

Washington has used its control of the global financial system to threaten its European allies and much of the world to impose these sanctions, which themselves constitute an act of war. 

IAEA officials discovered in September that Iran possessed 128.3 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium. Transforming enriched uranium into 90% enriched weapons-grade uranium and using it to make a nuclear bomb is a relatively simple technological task. The IAEA said Iran has 60% enriched uranium, enough to produce three nuclear bombs in a matter of weeks when enriched to 90%.