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Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Iran missile tests

The United States and Israel have condemned Iran's test firing of a missile capable of striking Tel Aviv or US bases in the Middle East.

Iran's state-controlled TV channel Al-Alam said that a Shahab-3, with a range of 2,000km, was among nine missiles fired from an undisclosed location in the Iranian desert on Wednesday.

"Iran's development of ballistic missiles is a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions and completely inconsistent with Iran's obligations to the world,"Gordon Johndroe, White House spokesman, said.

He expressed concern that Iran's ballistic missiles could be used as "a delivery vehicle for a potential nuclear weapon".

The test came as Iran stepped up the rhetoric in its warnings of retaliation if attacked and conducted a military exercise in the Straits of Hormuz.

"The aim of these war games is to show we are ready to defend the integrity of the Iranian nation," Hossein Salami, Revolutionary Guards air force commander, was quoted as saying.

"Quite frankly, there is a palpable fear in Europe about the Iranian nuclear programme; one, they are very concerned about the implications of Iran developing a nuclear weapon ... and secondly they are worried that the Israelis are seeing a window closing and that there may be strikes against Iran that would then cause things to spiral out of control."

Iran has repeatedly denied accusations that it is developing a nuclear programme in order to build atomic weapons, and earlier this week it sent a response to a package of economic incentives aimed at pushing it to halt uranium enrichment.

EU officials have said they are still evaluating the response, but Tehran has insisted it will not suspend enrichment.

http://english.aljazeera.net/

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