Fredrik Dahl and Hossein Jaseb
Reuters
TEHRAN: Iran test-fired missiles on Sunday to show it was prepared to head off any military threat, four days before the Islamic Republic was due to hold rare talks with world powers worried about its nuclear ambitions.
The missile maneuvers coincide with escalating tension in Iran’s nuclear row with the West, after last week’s disclosure by Tehran that it is building a second uranium enrichment plant.
News of the nuclear facility south of Tehran added a sense of urgency to a crucial meeting in Geneva on Thursday between Iranian officials and representatives of six major powers, including the United States.
Iran will be put “to the test” in Geneva and a move to sanctions would follow if the talks failed, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told CBS.
An Iranian official has warned that “fabricated Western clamor” over the new plant would negatively affect the talks at which the six powers want Iran to agree to open its facilities to inspection to prove its program is for power and not nuclear weapons.
Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s envoy to the UN’s nuclear watchdog, said, referring to Western condemnation of the plant: “This approach will have a negative impact on Iran’s negotiations with the 5+1 countries.”
He has said Iran is arranging International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of the plant “in the very near future.”
US President Barack Obama said on Saturday the discovery of the secret nuclear plant in Iran showed a “disturbing pattern” of evasion by Tehran. He warned Iran on Friday it would face “sanctions that bite” if it did not come clean.
Earlier this month, Obama dropped a Bush-era plan to deploy missiles in Poland that had been proposed as a shield amid concerns that Iran was trying to develop nuclear warheads it could mount on long-range missiles.
Iranian media said Revolutionary Guards launched at two types of short-range missiles on the exercise’s first day on Sunday in central Iran and tested a multiple missile launcher.
“For all those who … might harbor dreams about undertaking military invasion against our nation and country, a message of this maneuver is firmness, destructiveness, real and endless resistance,” Iranian General
Hossein Salami, head of the Guards’ air force, told state television. Iranian media said medium-range Shahab 1 and 2 missiles, which officials say have a range of 300 and 500 kilometers respectively, would be test-fired on Sunday evening.
State radio said the Guards on Monday would test-fire the Shahab 3 missile, which Iranian officials say has a range of around 2,000 kilometers, potentially putting Israel and US bases in the Gulf within reach. It was last tested in mid-2008.
Iran conducts war games or tests weapons to show its resolve to counter any attack by foes like Israel or the United States.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who says any military action against Iran would only serve to “buy time” and stresses the need for diplomacy, told CNN that he hoped the disclosure of the second facility would force Tehran to make concessions. “The Iranians are in a very bad spot now because of this deception,” he said.
State television showed footage of missiles soaring into the sky, leaving vapor trails, in the drills held during Iran’s Holy Defense Week marking the start of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
Andrew Brookes, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank in London, told Reuters by phone he believed the missile tests had long been planned and were not a response to Western condemnation of the second enrichment plant.
But he noted the firing of the missiles came before the Geneva talks, adding Tehran was showing “we are a powerful nation, we need respect … we are coming as equals.”
English-language Press TV said the weapons tested on Sunday included a ground-to-ground missile and a naval missile, naming them as Fateh (Victorious) and Tondar (Thunder).
Neither the United States nor its ally Israel has ruled out military action if diplomacy fails to resolve the nuclear row.
Iran has said it would respond to any attack by targeting US interests in the region and Israel, as well as closing the Strait of Hormuz, a vital route for world oil supplies.
Iran acknowledged the existence of the enrichment plant near the holy city of Qom for the first time on Monday to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog.
US officials said the disclosure was designed to pre-empt an announcement by Western governments, which were aware of the site, but Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the plant was legal and open for inspection by the IAEA.
A senior US administration official said the six powers – the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China and Germany – were preparing “a set of transparency demands” focused on the uranium enrichment plant near Qom.
Israel presses for more Iran sanctions
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israel is lobbying Western powers to impose harsher sanctions on arch-foe Iran after Tehran disclosed the existence of a second uranium-enrichment plant, Israeli news reports said Sunday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for more sanctions in a series of phone calls with US congressmen and senators after Iran’s announcement, the left-leaning Haaretz daily said.
“Action must be taken in all areas to increase pressure on Iran and impose crippling sanctions on it,” the report quoted him as saying. “If not now, then when?”
Widely considered the region’s sole if undeclared nuclear power, Israel along with the West thinks Iran is trying to develop atomic weapons under the guise of its controversial nuclear program, a charge Tehran denies.
On Saturday, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said news of the new site proved Iran was seeking nuclear weapons and demanded an “unequivocal” answer from the six major world powers involved in negotiating over the nuclear dispute.
Israeli daily Maariv quoted Israeli army Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi as telling close aides that “there is still time to stop Iran from getting nuclear arms [by using] tougher sanctions.”
“But [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad has to know that he can end his days like Saddam Hussein or [Libyan leader Moammar] Ghadhafi,” he said.
Israel has repeatedly said that all options, including military action, are possible to confront Iran over its nuclear drive.
Israel considers the Islamic Republic its arch-enemy after repeated statements by Ahmadinejad that the Holocaust was a “myth” and that Israel is doomed to be “wiped off the map.” – AFP