A top Iranian commander said that Iran has built a third underground ballistic missile production facility, the state-owned PressTV website reported Thursday.

“I hereby announce that in recent years the third underground missile production factory has been inaugurated by the IRGC,” Commander of the Aerospace Division of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said at a ceremony in the southwestern city of Dezful.

Hajizadeh further boasted of Iran’s self-reliance in developing its ballistic missile program, saying, “all the basic material for manufacturing [missile] shells and producing fuel, etc for missiles are fully designed and manufactured at home by Iranian experts.”

“It is natural for the US and Israel to be concerned and nervous over our missile production, missile tests and the display of our missile cities as they always want the Iranian nation to be in the position of weakness,” the general added.

Last year, following the launch of two ballistic missiles, Hajizadeh boasted that Israel was within the range of Iran’s missiles, saying, “[the] reason we designed our missiles with a range of 2000 km is to be able to hit our enemy the Zionist regime from a safe distance.”

Iran has continued testing ballistic missiles since implementation of the nuclear deal in defiance of the United Nations Security Council resolution that formalized the deal. Under Security Council resolution 2231, Iran is “called upon not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.”

The bipartisan Countering Iran’s Destabilizing Activities Act of 2017, which targets Iran’s non-nuclear aggression, passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee 18 to 3 on Thursday. The bill, if passed, would impose sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile program, its support for terror and its human rights violations.

[Photo: PressTV ]