Iran conducts further missile tests in defiance of sanctions

Iran said its armed forces had fired two more ballistic missiles on Wednesday as it continued tests in defiance of US warnings.

"Long-range Qadr-H and Qadr-F precision missiles were fired today... which destroyed targets" some 1,400 kilometres (870 miles) away, official media quoted the deputy head of the Revolutionary Guards, General Hossein Salami, as saying.

State television broadcast video of two missiles being fired from a site in the Alborz mountain range in northern Iran.

Iran also carried out multiple ballistic missile tests on Tuesday, defying US sanctions imposed earlier this year, aimed at disrupting its missile programme.

The missile sanctions were imposed a day after nuclear-related sanctions on Iran were lifted.

US State Department spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday he could not confirm Tehran's multiple tests, but warned that Washington might take unilateral or international action in response.

"The more our enemies increase the sanctions the more intense the Guards' reaction" will be, General Amir Ali Hajizadeh who heads the Revolutionary Guards' aerospace wing said on Wednesday.

"Yesterday we saw missiles fired from silos and platforms and today the launches are taking place from the heart of our Islamic land," he added.

"The reason we have designed these missiles with such a range - 2,000 kilometres - is to be able to hit our remote enemies, the Zionist regime," ISNA news agency quoted Hajizadeh as saying, referring to Israel.

The series of tests included short-, medium- and long-range precision guided missiles, with ranges of 300 kilometres, 500 kilometres, 800 kilometres and 2,000 kilometres, state media reported.