Middle East Trade Show Gives Rare Window into Iran’s Weapon Offerings

JUST IN: Middle East Trade Show Gives Rare Window into Iran’s Weapon Offerings

Iran Ministry of Defense image

DOHA, Qatar — Inside a catalogue being distributed at the Iran Ministry of Defense booth at a major Middle East trade show was an illustration of shore-to-ship missiles being fired from a craggy, red desert setting.

Out to sea was an image of the ship being targeted. “Surface-to-ground ballistic missile — missile weapon systems,” the page title read in Arabic.

The Doha International Maritime Defense Exhibition and Conference, also known as DIMDEX, is one of the rare defense trade shows where Iran is permitted to display and market its weapon systems. That includes the technology most likely being passed on to Houthi rebels in Yemen, who at the time of the trade show were still firing missiles and weaponized drones at ships in the Red Sea. The Houthis are widely believed to be backed by Iran.

Former Navy officer and now senior fellow at the Hudson Institute Bryan Clark — after examining the image — said it appeared to be illustrating short-range ballistic missiles, intermediate-range ballistic missiles and anti-ship ballistic missiles “that are equipped with a seeker to improve their accuracy.”

“Although we have seen open-source evidence that Iran has these systems and the Houthis have been using them, this is a bold statement of Iran’s willingness to be tied to the Houthi effort and that they may be willing to sell these capabilities to others, like Russia,” he said in an email.

National Defense on March 5 asked a representative at the booth for comments, but he said they were prohibited from speaking to the press. Visitors were free, however, to take pictures and all the literature available.

Also on display in the booth was a scale model of Iran’s latest iteration of a medium-altitude, low-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle called the “Gaza,” presumably honoring Iran’s Palestinian allies. A brochure in Arabic said the armed surveillance drone had an unloaded weight of 1,740 kilograms, maximum weight of 3,740 kilograms and could carry 500 kilograms of munitions.

It features a turbofan engine and can reach speeds of 350 kilometers per hour and fly a maximum of 25 hours as high as 35,000 feet.

Also being marketed with a splashy 16-page brochure in Arabic was the Sevom Khordad road-mobile, medium-range air defense missile system and its accompanying Taer-2B missiles.

Of the half dozen or so Iranian companies being represented in the booth, Shiraz Electronics Industries had the most extensive catalogues in English. It is “the largest subsidiary of the huge state-run holding company of Iran Electronics Industries,” its brochure said. The company was featuring shoulder-fired weapons, proximity and timing fuzes, laser systems, night vision goggles and truck-mounted radars.

The booth also featured scale models of about 12 naval ships and small watercraft, plus a model of a 29-meter-long midget submarine with a 115-ton displacement.

Marketing material distributed in the booth were mostly in English, Arabic and Russian, although there was one Iran Ministry of Defense missile catalogue in Spanish. The Spanish missile system catalogue dated 2022 listed six different CM-class anti-ship missiles and six AD-class anti-aircraft missiles.

Some of the more interesting technologies touted on fact sheets in English included a diver detection sonar “capable of detecting underwater threats like divers and diver delivery vehicles.” The towed sonar had a detection range of 250 to 500 meters and could track up to three targets, the literature said.

The booth featured two anti-torpedo systems — an acoustic decoy and an acoustic jammer. The decoy designed to mimic the sound of a vessel boasted a speed of 2 to 10 knots with a 3-to-5-kilometer radius at a 10-meter depth and comes in three sizes. The jammer is designed to thwart offensive torpedoes employing active/passive acoustic homing systems. It can operate as long as 20 minutes, a fact sheet stated.

The booth also offered the KL-7.62 mm assault rifle, a gas-operated gun “especially suited for guerrilla war,” a fact sheet said. It stated a 400-meter effective range with a 600 rounds per minute rate and a 30-round magazine, folding butt stock and a “multipurpose bayonet.”

An inertial navigation system on offer, the DH4, is “two times better than GPS,” literature distributed at the Iran booth stated. It uses “high accuracy fiber optic gyros and accelerometers” when a global navigation satellite system such as Galileo — the European Union-operated precision navigation and timing system — is offline or being jammed.

Topics: Global Defense Market, International