General Shakarchi: Copying Iranian Drones Is an Admission of Our Superiority

According to KhabarOnline, an Iranian News Agency, Speaking to journalists, Brigadier General Abolfazl Shakarchi, Deputy for Cultural Affairs and Soft Warfare at Iran’s General Staff of the Armed Forces, stated that the decision by countries that portray themselves as leaders in military technology—most notably the United States—to copy the domestically produced Shahed-136 drone reflects the scale of Iran’s engineering achievements.

“There is no greater source of pride than seeing so-called technological superpowers forced to kneel before an Iranian-made drone and resort to replication to fill their own capability gaps,” Shakarchi said, describing the trend as a major honor for the Iranian nation.

He added that a state long branding itself as the world’s dominant military power and widely associated with aggressive foreign policies has now turned to emulating technology developed by Iran’s aerospace sector in order to overcome its operational shortcomings.

Shakarchi noted that these developments highlight the status of the Aerospace Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a prominent player in the global defense landscape. He argued that Iran’s advances in this field have attracted the attention of nations across the world—many of which, he said, view Tehran’s technological progress as proof that independent development can counter long-standing systems of domination.

Referring to regional security dynamics, the Iranian spokesperson asserted that the IRGC Aerospace Force has become a key deterrent element, one that—according to his remarks—has unsettled Israel’s military establishment and complicated the strategic calculations of what he termed the “system of global hegemony.”

He warned that hostile rhetoric driven by “illusion rather than reality” should not be misread as merely political posturing. “If these illusions are ever translated into action, they will be met with responses even stronger than before,” Shakarchi said, adding that the recent twelve-day conflict had already demonstrated Iran’s ability to translate its capabilities into real-world deterrence.

Shakarchi concluded by stressing that Iran’s expanding drone and missile programs are no longer symbolic achievements, but tangible components of its national defense—now influencing the evolving balance of power in the increasingly competitive domain of unmanned warfare.