July 3, 2006: Iran just announced that it is now one of the top producers of anti-tank missiles, and that it was now manufacturing a state-of-the-art missile manufacturing country. However, as usual, no further details were given. This is typical of Iran, which has a mixed record when it comes to producing high-tech weapons domestically. Iran certainly has plenty of anti-tank missile technology. Some 19,000 American TOW anti-tank missiles were shipped to Iran in the 1970s. All of them are now unusable, unless certain key components (batteries, rocket fuel) have been replaced. Iran has been known to take older weapons, refurbish them, and then display of them as new, " designed and manufactured in Iran". Large quantities of Russian anti-tank missiles were purchased during the 1980s (for use in the war against Iraq). Moreover, since the 1970s, there Iran has had an active missile repair and development center, and this facility was heavily used during the 1980s when Iran bought hundreds of SCUD missiles for use against Iraq. Many of the SCUDs were modified (with a larger fuel tank) to enable them to hit targets deeper inside Iraq. One of the SCUD suppliers was North Korea, which had all sorts of useful, if somewhat out-of-date military technology. Russia and China have also been willing to sell manufacturing technology, and more up-to-date stuff, in large quantities, has been smuggled in. While Iran likes to issue press releases about manufacturing, and exporting, weapons, there have been few public exhibitions of these weapons, nor many actual export sales.