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Zarif Says Won't Run In Presidential Elections

A picture published by the website of Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, during his reception of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif shortly after the nuclear agreement was reached in 2015.
A picture published by the website of Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, during his reception of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif shortly after the nuclear agreement was reached in 2015.
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Zarif Says Won't Run In Presidential Elections

A picture published by the website of Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, during his reception of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif shortly after the nuclear agreement was reached in 2015.
A picture published by the website of Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, during his reception of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif shortly after the nuclear agreement was reached in 2015.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif officially announced that he would not run in upcoming presidential elections, hours before his plane landed at Damascus airport.

A number of reformist websites reported that former President Mohammad Khatami, Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the former Supreme Leader Khomeini, failed to persuade Zarif to run in the elections.

During a closed session to discuss the leaked audio on Sunday, Zarif informed the parliament that he does not intend to run in the presidential elections, in an attempt to assert that he does not have electoral goals.

Zarif addressed the Iranian citizens through an Instagram post saying his candidacy for this year’s elections is not in the interest of the country and the people.

He said he had made the decision not on the basis of personal interests or for his own convenience, but because “I have reached this conscientious conviction that me running would not be in the best interest of the country and the nation given the perturbations that have been displayed in the past eight years.”

Zarif said that the elections will be fateful, explaining that not voting is a choice, “but one that would only lead to the victory of the minority.”

He implicitly criticized the pressures he has been subjected to since the Iranian New Year, referring to a television series about Western intelligence services spying on the nuclear negotiating team.

The FM announced his upcoming regional and European tour, pointing out that it is “within the framework of the foreign minister’s duties,” and is not related to the nuclear negotiations in Vienna aimed at reaching an agreement.

Zarif mocked his opponents, urging them to focus on local issues, the priorities of guarding national interests, and protecting people from US sanctions.

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Global Interest in Israel's Air-Launched Ballistic Missiles

This handout picture released by the Israeli army on October 26, 2024, shows an Israeli fighter jet departing a hangar at an undisclosed location in Israel. (Photo by AFP)
This handout picture released by the Israeli army on October 26, 2024, shows an Israeli fighter jet departing a hangar at an undisclosed location in Israel. (Photo by AFP)
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Global Interest in Israel's Air-Launched Ballistic Missiles

This handout picture released by the Israeli army on October 26, 2024, shows an Israeli fighter jet departing a hangar at an undisclosed location in Israel. (Photo by AFP)
This handout picture released by the Israeli army on October 26, 2024, shows an Israeli fighter jet departing a hangar at an undisclosed location in Israel. (Photo by AFP)

Israel's effective use of air-launched ballistic missiles in its airstrikes against Iran is expected to pique interest elsewhere in acquiring the weapons, which most major powers have avoided in favor of cruise missiles and glide bombs.
The Israeli Army said its Oct. 26 raid knocked out Iranian missile factories and air defenses in three waves of strikes.
Researchers said that based on satellite imagery, targets included buildings once used in Iran's nuclear program, according to Reuters.
Tehran defends such targets with “a huge variety” of anti-aircraft systems, said Justin Bronk, an airpower and technology expert at London's Royal United Services Institute.
Cruise missiles are easier targets for dense, integrated air defenses than ballistic missiles are.
But ballistic missiles are often fired from known launch points, and most cannot change course in flight.
Experts say high-speed, highly accurate air-launched ballistic missiles such as the Israel Aerospace Industries Rampage get around problems facing ground-based ballistic missiles and air-launched cruise missiles - weapons that use small wings to fly great distances and maintain altitude.
“The main advantage of an ALBM over an ALCM is speed to penetrate defenses,” said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California.
“The downside - accuracy - looks to have been largely solved,” he said.
Ground-launched ballistic missiles - which Iran used to attack Israel twice this year, and which both Ukraine and Russia have used since Russia's invasion in 2022 - are common in the arsenals of many countries. So, too, are cruise missiles.
Because ALBMs are carried by aircraft, their launch points are flexible, helping strike planners.
“The advantage is that being air-launched, they can come from any direction, complicating the task of defending against them,” said Uzi Rubin, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, one of the architects of Israel's missile defenses.
The weapons are not invulnerable to air defenses. In Ukraine, Lockheed Martin Patriot PAC-3 missiles have repeatedly intercepted Russia's Khinzhals.
Many countries, including the United States and Britain, experimented with ALBMs during the Cold War. Only Israel, Russia and China are known to field the weapons now.
The US tested a hypersonic ALBM, the Lockheed Martin AGM-183, but it received no funding for the 2025 fiscal year.
Because it has a large arsenal of cruise missiles and other types of long-range strike weapons, Washington has otherwise shown little interest in ALBMs.
A US Air Force official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said ALBMs are not used in Air Force operations.
Raytheon's SM-6, an air-defense missile that has been repurposed for air-to-air and surface-to-surface missions, also has been tested as an air-launched anti-ship weapon, said a senior US defense technical analyst, who declined to be identified because the matter is sensitive.
In tests the missile was able to strike a small target on land representing the center of mass of a destroyer, the analyst said. Publicly, the SM-6 is not meant for air-to-ground strikes.
Because ALBMs are essentially a combination of guidance, warheads and rocket motors, many countries that have precision weapons already have the capability to pursue them, a defense industry executive said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
“This is a clever way of taking a common set of technologies and components and turning it into a very interesting new weapon that gives them far more capability, and therefore options, at a reasonable price,” the executive said.