Iran has prepared significant improvements, including new “astonishing” weapons and capabilities, for its military operations in the event of renewed attacks by the US, said the country’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Monday.

“The changes in defensive and counteroffensive operations include a shift in the geography of war, and a shift in weapons and military equipment,” IRGC spokesperson Hossein Mohebbi told local media.

“We will bring new weapons with new capabilities into the battlefield, and the world will be astonished.”

He added, “Our targets are also no longer necessarily the same [as the] previous targets. We have new targets that have not yet been struck.”

The statement came as the Guard Corps confirmed its air defences has intercepted and destroyed a US MQ-1 drone over the Strait of Hormuz.

In a separate statement carried by Iranian news agencies, the IRGC said the US had retired the MQ-1 drones but was forced to put them back into service after losing many of its more advanced MQ-9s.

‘US not courageous to admit defeat’

“The United States has been defeated in this war, and its defeat is also a historic and humiliating defeat, but it does not have the courage to admit and accept this defeat,” Hossein Mohebbi said in comments carried by local media.

One sign of that defeat, according to Mohebbi, is Washington’s failure to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran closed in response to the joint US-Israeli war. He said the US brought all its capabilities into play but “could not” reopen the waterway.

He also said US bases across the region became a liability, as the investment made to provide security “was turned into the opposite of security” when the bases came under Iranian attacks.

Mohebbi added that Iranian missiles hit US intelligence centres around the Gulf and northern Iraq, which he says proved the facilities were not beyond reach and amounted to “a major intelligence defeat” for the US.