A commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards has vowed the country's ballistic-missile program will never stop under any circumstances and Tehran has missiles ready to fire.
Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh told state TV late on March 9 that the Revolutionary Guards "never accepted the UN Security Council resolutions on Iran's missile work."
The Revolutionary Guards test-fired several ballistic missiles on March 8 and 9, state media reported.
Iranian reports said the missiles fired on March 9 had "Israel must be wiped out" written on them.
Hajizadeh said on March 9 that the Qadr-H missiles were designed with a range of 2,000 kilometers to attack Israel from a safe distance.
Commentators said the tests are seen as a challenge to a UN resolution and the 2015 nuclear deal under which Tehran agreed to restrict its nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.
But Iran on March 10 denied the missile tests were a violation of the landmark 2015 agreement, which led to the lifting of sanctions in January.
"Iran's missile program and its test-firing of missiles in the past days during a military drill are not against its nuclear commitments and the nuclear deal reached with the six powers," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaberi-Ansari said.