Leaders of the IRGC’s Qods Force, including Gen. Qassem Soleimani (center). Photo: Iran official.

The head of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee announced this week that the Tehran regime would be spending an extra $600 million to strengthen both its missile program and the notorious Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — which has directed military interventions in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and other countries in the region.

Citing the latest Iranian conspiracy theory that Israel was financing and supporting the Sunni terrorist organization ISIS — “as evidenced by presence of their injured members in hospitals of the Zionist regime” — committee chairman Alaeddin Boroujerdi stated that “one main axis of [Iran’s] retaliatory plan is serious support of the country’s missile program as the only available means of confronting enemy threats.”

“As such, approximately 300 million dollars have been allocated to promote Iran’s missile program while a similar amount has been assigned to support Quds Force of IRGC, in the absence of whom, terrorists would be ruling in Damascus and Baghdad,” Boroujerdi continued, in remarks reported by Iranian state media outlets.

Among the benefits to Iran of the nuclear deal agreed with six world powers — led by the US — in July 2015 was a windfall of $150 billion that many analysts feared would be allocated to its military programs. Iran’s ongoing ballistic missile development program was one of the key reasons behind the US Senate’s near-unanimous decision to impose tough new sanctions on the regime last month.

Boroujerdi’s announcement coincided with a new ballistic missile launch undertaken by Iran’s close ally and military technology partner, North Korea, on Tuesday. The Pyongyang regime said that its new Hwasong-14 missile reached an altitude of over 1,700 miles over a distance of more than 600 miles.

In January, Iran launched a ballistic missile based on the Hwasong-10, an earlier version of the missile tested by the North Koreans on Tuesday. US defense officials have frequently expressed concern over the cooperation between the two countries on missile development.