The Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT) has issued a report detailing its assessment of the recently-concluded general election, expressing deep concerns over a decline in fairness scores compared to previous election cycles.
An Iranian Revolutionary Guards general claimed Thursday that the Islamic republic has developed a hypersonic missile capable of penetrating all defence systems, raising concerns from the UN nuclear watchdog.
Hypersonic missiles, like traditional ballistic missiles which can deliver nuclear weapons, can fly more than five times the speed of sound.
“This hypersonic ballistic missile was developed to counter air defence shields,” General Amirali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps aerospace unit said, quoted by Iran's Fars news agency.
“It will be able to breach all the systems of anti-missile defense,” said the general, adding that he believed it would take decades before a system capable of intercepting it is developed.
“This missile, which targets enemy anti-missile systems, represents a great generational leap in the field of missiles.”
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi expressed concerns about the announcement.
“We see that all these announcements increase the attention, increase the concerns, increase the public attention to the Iranian nuclear programme,” Grossi told AFP on the sidelines of the COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
But he added that he does not see this as “having any influence” on negotiations over the Islamic republic's nuclear programme.
The announcement comes after Iran admitted on Saturday that it had sent drones to Russia, but said it had done so before the Ukraine war.
The Washington Post reported on October 16 that Iran was preparing to ship missiles to Russia, but Tehran rejected the report as “completely false”.
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