Iran unveiled a new ballistic missile named "Khorramshahr" at a military parade on Friday and reiterated its determination to boost its missile capabilities in defiance of pressure from the United States and Israel.

The new missile, which has a 2,000-kilometer range and can carry multiple warheads, "will be operational soon," Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' aerospace forces, was quoted as saying by Tasnim News Agency.

(Islamic Republic News Agency/Kyodo)

President Hassan Rouhani said at a parade ceremony that Iran will defend itself as it sees fit. "We will reinforce our missiles. We won't ask anyone's permission to defend our land," he said.

The president was speaking a day after returning from the U.N. General Assembly in New York, where Iran came under severe criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump. Rouhani said what transpired there "unveiled the true face" of the United States and its ally Israel.

In his address to the world body Wednesday, Trump called the 2015 nuclear deal signed between Iran and six major powers, under which Tehran agreed to uranium-enrichment limits and to international inspections of its nuclear facilities in return for the lifting of crippling banking and trade sanctions, an "embarrassment."

He vowed not to let Iran, which he described as "economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed and chaos" continue destabilizing the Middle East "while building dangerous missiles."

Speaking the same day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran's missile development threatens the entire world and urged world powers to "fix or nix" the nuclear deal before it is too late.

He warned the nuclear deal will eventually allow Iran "to enrich uranium on an industrial scale, placing it on the threshold of a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons...with the missiles to deliver them anywhere on earth."

Iran, while curbing its nuclear program under the deal, has refused to do likewise with its missile program.

Speaking at the General Assembly a day after Trump and Netanyahu spoke, Rouhani rejected the "ignorant, absurd, and hateful rhetoric filled with ridiculously baseless allegations that was uttered before this body yesterday."

He insisted Iran's missiles "are solely defensive deterrence for the maintenance of regional peace and stability and the prevention of adventurous tendencies of irrational aspirants."

"We cannot forget that civilians in many of our cities became the targets of long range missile attacks by Saddam Hussein during his eight-year war of aggression against us. We will never allow our people to become victims of such catastrophic delusions again," he said, referring to the Iran-Iraq War.

Friday's military parade in Tehran was held to commemorate that war, which began on Sept. 22, 1980, and lasted for eight years.

Rouhani also rejected U.S. accusations of Iran fomenting instability in the Middle East, including in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon, and said Iran has historically assisted oppressed peoples.

He urged the United States to instead "explain to its own people why after spending millions of dollars of the assets of the people of America and of our region instead of contributing to peace and stability, it has only brought war, misery, poverty and the rise of terrorism and extremism to the region."

After Friday prayers, Iranians across the country protested against Trump's U.N. speech and chanted "Death to America."

At the parade ceremony, held at the tomb of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini, Rouhani blasted Israel as a "blood-sucking Zionist regime" and a "cancerous tumor" that has been "for 70 years has been violating the rights of nations of region."

His remarks appeared to be in reaction to those of Netanyahu, who told the United Nations his earlier prediction has come true, namely that following the lifting of international sanctions, "Iran would behave like a hungry tiger unleashed, not joining the community of nations, but devouring nations one after the other."