• Iran has the largest and most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East. (Israel has more capable ballistic missiles, but fewer in number and type.) Most were acquired from foreign sources, notably North Korea. The Islamic Republic is the only country to develop a 2,000-km missile without first having a nuclear weapons capability. Iran is still dependent on foreign suppliers for some key ingredients, components and equipment, but it has the technical and industrial capacity to develop long-range missiles, including an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, or ICBM. The military utility of Iran’s liquid-fuel ballistic missiles is limited because of poor accuracy, so these missiles are not likely to be decisive if armed with conventional, chemical or biological warheads. But Tehran could use its missiles as a political or psychological weapon to terrorize an adversary’s cities and pressure its government. Iran’s indigenous Fateh-110 family of solid-fuel missiles have achieved the precision necessary to destroy military and critical-infrastructure targets reliably, as demonstrated during its January 2020 attack against U.S. forces stationed at Ayn al Asad airbase in Iraq using Zolfaghar missiles.  Iran should not be able to reliably strike Western Europe before 2022 or the United States before 2025—at the earliest.  Iran’s space program, which includes the successful launch of several small, crude satellites into low earth orbit using the Safir and Qased carrier rockets, proves the country’s growing ambitions and technical prowess. Since 2016, the larger, more powerful Simorgh failed to put a satellite into orbit during four launch attempts and remains a work in progress.

In late December, Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif signalled the Islamic Republic's readiness to defend its "security and vital interests" amid the US military buildup near the country's borders. He accused Washington of wasting hefty sums to repeatedly send B-52 bombers to the region instead of focusing on the fight against COVID-19. Hundreds of Iranian scientists have urged the country's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force to destroy any US warplanes, especially B-52 bombers, and American warships if they trepass Iran's borders, the FARS news agency reports. 

Mike Pompeo on Tuesday accused Iran of acting as al-Qaida’s “new home base,” the outgoing secretary of state’s latest attempt to advance a dubious claim that could justify a military strike against Iran or sabotage President-elect Joe Biden’s diplomatic efforts. The administration has tried several times to tie Iran to al-Qaida, a claim that has been called politicized or an outright lie. Pompeo made the latest allegation with less than two weeks left in office, and did not offer any new evidence to back it up. 

On December 17, 2020, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi met in Ankara. During the joint press conference, President Erdoğan said that Turkey and Iraq have agreed to continue fighting against their "common enemies," namely the PKK, ISIS, and the Gülen movement. During the press conference it was also highlighting that Turkey and Iraq can easily achieve the $20 billion trade volume target. Lately, tension in Iran's relations with Turkey was given public expression in the Iranian media. The Iranian regime is alarmed by the expansionist ambitions of Erdoğan's Sunni Islamist government, which come at the expense of Shi'ite Islamist Iran and its resistance axis.