Iran's missiles are only for self defense, the country's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in New York.
"We need them to make sure that another Saddam Hussein around the corner will not come and hit us again," Reuters cited him as saying.
Zarif noted that Iran was not designing missiles to carry nuclear warheads, which is banned under the nuclear deal.
Saddam Hussein launched the Iran-Iraq War in 1980, which ended only in 1988.
