Iran carries out air defence drills amid tension with Pakistan

Amid heightened tensions in the region, Iran announced on Friday that it had successfully completed an air defense drill utilizing drones intended to intercept hostile targets in an area spanning from its southern to southeastern shores.

Two days after Tehran claimed it had hit the bases of another group inside Pakistani territory, Pakistan on Thursday launched airstrikes against what it claimed to be separatist militants inside Iran in retaliation.

Since the conflict between Israel and Hamas broke out on October 7, the tit-for-tat strikes have been the most high-profile cross-border incursions in recent memory and have sparked fears about further instability in the Middle East.

“Iranian forces have successfully launched a new air defence method that uses drones to intercept and target hostile targets,” state-run Press TV quoted an Iranian army spokesman as saying.

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The two-day drills, which began on Thursday, cover an area from Abadan in southwestern Khuzestan province to Chahbahar in southeastern Sistan and Baluchistan province that borders Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Press TV said the army’s air force and navy, the aerospace force and the navy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) participated in the exercises.

Despite their long history of tense relations, Iran and Pakistan have both expressed a wish to defuse the tensions created by this week’s strikes.

Iran and its Middle Eastern militia allies have been attacking Israeli and American sites in the area in support of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, all against the backdrop of the ongoing conflict in that region.

Iran has also carried out strikes in Iraq, claiming to have hit an Israeli espionage center, and Syria, targeting what it claimed to be Islamic State locations.

(With agency inputs)