US highlights 'broken promises' on revolution: Iran in 'successful test' of new cruise missile

Iran announced the "successful test" of a new cruise missile with a range of over 1,350 kilometres on Saturday, coinciding with celebrations for the country's 1979 Islamic revolution. "The test of the Hoveizeh cruise missile was carried out successfully at a range of 1,200 kilometres (840 miles) and accurately hit the set target," Defence Minister Amir Hatami said, quoted on state television which broadcast footage of its launch.
"It can be ready in the shortest possible time and flies at a very low altitude," he said. Hatami described the Hoveizeh as the "long arm of the Islamic Republic of Iran" in defending itself. It is part of the Soumar group of cruise missile, first unveiled in 2015 with a range of 700 kilometres, according to the minister.
The Hoveizeh unveiling was part of an arms exhibition titled "40 years of defensive achievements" held in Tehran. Friday marked the beginning of 10 days of celebrations of the Islamic revolution that ousted the pro-Western shah. Iran has voluntarily limited the range of its missiles to 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles), sufficient to reach Israel and Western bases in the Middle East.
But Washington and its allies have accused Tehran of pursuing enhanced missile capabilities that also threaten Europe. Iran has "no intention of increasing the range" of its missiles, the country's Supreme National Security Council secretary, Admiral Ali Shamkhani, said Tuesday.
Meanwhile: The United States marked the 40th anniversary of Iran's Islamic Revolution by highlighting what it says are the "broken promises" of the Middle Eastern country's leadership. Tehran launched celebrations Friday to mark the 1979 return from exile of the Islamic republic's founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the revolution that overthrew a centuries-old dynasty.
"When he returned to Iran in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini made lots of promises to the Iranian people, including justice, freedom, and prosperity. 40 years later, Iran's ruling regime has broken all those promises, and has produced only 40YearsofFailure," the US State Department wrote on its official Twitter account. Khomeini said that "injustices of the past will not continue," according to the tweet. It quoted a report from the rights group Amnesty International as saying: "The staggering scale of arrests, imprisonment and flogging sentences reveal the extreme lengths the authorities have gone in order to suppress peaceful dissent."
A following tweet said Khomeini promised freedom of expression and freedom of the press - but today Iran "has one of the most repressive media environments," and the regime "detains dozens of journalists, throws them in prison and threatens their families," and "blocks the internet and bars access to social media."
In a third tweet, the State Department said that while Khomeini "promised material and spiritual prosperity to the Iranian people," four decades later "Iran's corrupt regime has destroyed the country's economy, desecrated Iran's noble heritage, and produced only 40YearsofFailure." The administration of President Donald Trump has been consistently hawkish on Iran and tries to counter what it considers Iran's "destabilizing" influence in the region. The two countries have not had diplomatic relations since 1980, and the president pulled the United States from an international agreement meant to check Iran's nuclear weapon ambitions.