TEHRAN, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) held a combined drill along the country's southern coast, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Tuesday.
The exercise involved multiple units of the IRGC Ground Forces and employed modern combat technologies and up-to-date tactics against existing threats, the report said, without specifying the date of the drill.
During the drill, micro aerial vehicles and the homegrown Rezvan loitering drones identified targets, and Shahed 136 kamikaze drones hit the targeted points, Fars reported.
According to the Fars report, forces also practiced the scenario of "strongly defending" the country's coasts and islands, and the IRGC Ground Forces' special forces carrying out operations to prevent the enemy from approaching Iran's southern coasts.
The exercise also featured operations by missile units using new and diverse systems, including a missile system recently delivered to the IRGC Ground Forces.
In remarks on the sidelines of the drill, IRGC Ground Forces Commander Mohammad Karami said all participating units, including missile, artillery, drone, special forces, and armored units, successfully carried out the planned operations and scenarios which had been designed based on the existing threats, said the report.
Mohammad-Hadi Sefidchian, commander of the IRGC Ground Forces' Madinah Headquarters, added that forces carried out passive defense measures and both offensive and defensive electronic warfare scenarios.
The drill aimed to improve the units' combat readiness, enable combined operations, and employ modern technologies in proportion to the new threats, Sefidchian noted.
The exercise came amid heightened tensions between Iran and the United States and a U.S. military buildup in the West Asia region. The two countries are scheduled to hold the third round of indirect negotiations over Iran's nuclear program on Thursday in Geneva. ■
