The Times of Israel reports: Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Sunday defended his country’s latest ballistic missile test in defiance of Western and Israeli criticism, saying the controversial program served the Islamic Republic’s defensive needs.

“Iran has defensive needs,” Zarif told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in an interview aired Sunday. “Iran is not buying a hundred billion dollars of so-called beautiful military equipment from the United States.” “Iran needs to develop its own defenses, we have said and again, and we have proven that our missiles are for defense,” he emphasized.

“You know, we go back to a history where our cities were being showered with missiles from Saddam Hussein… and Iran did not have a single missile to work as a deterrence against its citizens,” Zarif added referring to the bloody Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988.

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