Posted by RAPPERS I.Q ? on September 27, 2009 at 6:40pm
Iran test-fired three short-range missiles on Sunday as tension escalated over the revelation of its secret new nuclear enrichment facility.The missiles were fired two days after the United States, Britain and France disclosed that Iran was secretly constructing an underground uranium enrichment plant, and appeared to be a show of military power as the West intensified its pressure on Iran over its nuclear program.Iran is meeting with Germany, France, Britain, China, Russia and the United States in Geneva on Thursday, its first direct negotiations with the United States since President Obama took office.Gen. Hussein Salimi, head of the Revolutionary Guards Air force, warned that Iran was ready to respond to possible attacks.“We are going to respond to any military action in a crushing manner and it doesn’t make any difference which country or regime has launched the aggression,” he told Iranian state television on Sunday.While American officials have said that all options were on the table, they have played down the prospects for and usefulness of a military response. The West is demanding extensive Iranian cooperation with international inspections of its nuclear program and has threatened to apply tougher sanctions if it does not cooperate.The West has accused Iran of having a secret nuclear weapons program but Iran contends that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.General Salimi said that the three missiles tested Sunday were Tondar-69, Fateh-110 and Zelzal types, state-run television reported. All three weapons, powered by solid fuel, have a range of between 90 and 125 miles.He also said that the Revolutionary Guards tested a “multiple missile launcher for the first time” on Sunday. The state-run Fars news agency reported that the launcher was capable of firing two missiles at the same time aimed at separate targets.Iran plans to fire two medium-range Shahab-1 and Shahab-2 missiles on Monday, the agency reported.Iran test-fired its longest-range solid-fuel missile, a Sajjil-2 with a range of 1,200 miles, in May.Iran continued to insist that its new nuclear facility, under construction near the holy city of Qum, 62 miles south of Tehran, was for peaceful purposes and that Iran had voluntarily disclosed its existence to the United Nations nuclear agency last week.“It is not clear whether we should make announcement or not,” Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s nuclear program, said in an interview with ISNA news agency on Sunday. “If we announce it, they get upset. If we don’t, they get upset.”He has denounced the West’s reaction to the disclosure as a “conspiracy” against Iran.He added that Iran had taken defensive measures against possible military threats against the facility into consideration. “We are always faced with threats,” he said. “We don’t think that those threats would necessarily take place but we have prepared ourselves for the worse.”He added that the facility was guarded with anti-aircraft weapons and was built underground to protect that staff and “sensitive equipment,” ISNA reported.Iran has said it would allow inspections of the site but has not said when.Israel considers Iran’s missile and nuclear program a direct threat and has hinted several times that it might stage a pre-emptive attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities. In 1981, Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility and in 2007, it attacked a site in Syria that intelligence analysts said was a partly constructed nuclear reactor.Source:NYTIMES.
}
Comments