Iran hailed Hamas’s surprise Oct. 7 attack but denied any involvement while Tehran-backed militant groups in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen have increasingly attacked US and anti-terror coalition troops deployed to Iraq and Syria Tel Aviv and Tehran are implacable foes, with Israel fiercely opposed to Iran’s nuclear program TEHRAN: Iran unveiled two new air defense systems on Saturday, state media reported, with tensions high in the Middle East amid the war in Gaza. “The Arman anti-ballistic missile system and the Azarakhsh low-altitude air defense system, built by the Ministry of Defense, were unveiled this morning,” the official IRNA news agency said. The unveiling of the new weapons comes at a time of heightened regional tensions with the war between Israel and Tehran-backed Hamas raging into a fifth month. “With the entry of new systems into the country’s defense network, the air defense capability of the Islamic Republic of Iran will increase significantly,” IRNA said. Even before the war, Israel and Iran were implacable foes, with Israel fiercely opposed to Tehran’s nuclear program. In 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for Iran to face a “credible military threat” to prevent it attaining nuclear weapons. Tehran has always insisted its nuclear program is peaceful and denies seeking a nuclear bomb. The Arman missile system revealed on Saturday “has a medium range and a high altitude that can identify targets at 180 km and engage and destroy them at 120 km,” Defense Minister Mohammad-Reza Ashtiani said during the unveiling ceremony, IRNA reported. The agency said the system could take on “six targets simultaneously” while the Azarakhsh defense system can be mounted on multiple vehicle types and “uses radar, electro-optical system and thermal seekers to detect and track its target.” Iran hailed Hamas’s surprise Oct. 7 attack but denied any involvement while Tehran-backed militant groups in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen have increasingly attacked US and anti-terror coalition troops deployed to Iraq and Syria. One such attack on Jan. 28 on a base in Jordan killed three US military personnel, leading Washington to launch its own strikes against pro-Iran targets in Syria and Iraq. The US, alongside Britain, also launched repeated strikes against Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis in response to the group’s persistent attacks on commercial shipping. The Houthis say their attacks in the Red Sea are in solidarity with Palestinians in war-battered Gaza. In June Iran presented what officials described as its first domestically made hypersonic ballistic missile, named Fattah, with a range of 1,400 km. Family massacre A 30-year-old man killed 12 relatives, including his father and brother in Iran, official media reported on Saturday, in a rare mass shooting in the country. They said the man, who was not identified, used a Kalashnikov assault rifle and was later shot and killed by security forces in the south-central province of Kerman. They said the cause of the shooting, in a remote rural village, was a family dispute. They did not elaborate. Mass killings are rare in Iran, where hunting rifles are the only weapons people are allowed to possess. Two years ago, a dismissed employee of a state institution in western Iran shot and killed three people and injured five before killing himself.