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Iran has acquired a nuclear-capable missile with a range of 3,000 kilometers.
The missile could threaten cities in most of Europe.
Iran
has reverse-engineered, deployed nuke-capable cruise missiles acquired from
Ukraine
Isralert.com source: Geostrategy-Direct, www.geostrategy-direct.com, October 18, 2005 via IMRA
Independent Media Review and Analysis www.imra.org.il
Teheran received 12 long-range Kh-55 cruise missiles from Ukraine in 2001
and has since enhanced the missiles and deployed them in the military, a leading
Iranian opposition source said.
Alireza Jafarzadeh, former chief of the
National Council of Resistance of Iran and president of the Washington-based
Strategic Policy Consulting Inc., said Iran has acquired a nuclear-capable
missile with a range of 3,000 kilometers. At an Aug. 26 briefing in Washington,
Jafarzadeh said the missile could threaten cities in most of Europe.
The
U.S. intelligence community has found Jafarzadeh to have highly credible
information on Iran's missile and nuclear weapons programs. "Four years after
receiving the cruise missiles from Ukraine, the Iranian regime has now mastered
the technology through a reverse engineering process," Jafarzadeh said. "In a
meeting of the regime's Supreme National Security Council, Defense Minister Ali
Shamkhani declared that by acquiring this 3,000-kilometer-range missile with
nuclear warhead capability, the Iranian regime is able to threaten European
countries."
In January 2005, Ukraine acknowledged that it sold Kh-55
cruise missiles to Iran. At the time, Kiev said the missiles were inoperable. In
his briefing, Jafarzadeh said the Kh-55s were delivered to the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps, which reconstructed the missiles and transferred them
to secret centers.
"As of right now, these missiles constitute a portion
of IRGC's missile capability," Jafarzadeh said.
Jafarzadeh said two of
the Kh-55s were delivered to the Parchin military complex in Teheran for reverse
engineering. Another two were delivered to the so-called cruise center, a
division of the Defense Ministry. The center includes engineers trained in
China, France, Germany, North Korea and Russia.
"Based on most recent
reports, during the past four years, the experts from cruise research division
have been able to rebuild the pieces of these missiles," Jafarzadeh said. "The
Iranian regime has gained knowledge and access to this missile's technology."
Jafarzadeh said Teheran was in the last stages of reproducing the cruise
missile, designed to escape enemy air defenses. "Strengthening the missile
system has been a pivotal part of the mullah regime's military strategy,"
Jafarzadeh said.
"In light of Iran's nuclear weapons program, its
advanced missile technology and the progress it has made in a nuclear capable
missile is
most threatening."
FOR MORE ON THIS ISSUE SEE:
Iranian militants in power stir fears
By Bill Gertz, THE WASHINGTON TIMES,
October 14, 2005
Isralert.com source
The rise of militants to power positions in Iran is raising new worries
about Iranian military forces' deploying new weapons that threaten oil supplies
or future long-range nuclear or chemical missile strikes.
Military
specialists say the Islamist regime in Tehran has not invested heavily in the
past decade in new tanks, armored vehicles or warplanes, but instead focused
defense spending on "asymmetric" warfare capabilities.
These include
Iran's covert nuclear program and new Shahab-3 and older Scud missiles that
could deliver nuclear, chemical and biological weapons hundreds of miles away.
Iran's military power is under scrutiny after new Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently placed the country's nuclear arms program under the
control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which are charged with
protecting the regime.
Iranian forces also have purchased and built
large coastal forces equipped with high-speed, anti-ship cruise missiles that
could be used to disrupt strategic oil supplies throughout the Persian Gulf.
"Their might comes not from large conventional forces but from
asymmetric capabilities that are very robust and rooted in the ability to engage
in subversion and terrorism," said Michael Eisenstadt, director of security
studies at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
A defense
intelligence official said Iran's military has two parts. One is the
conventional armed forces and the second is the Islamic shock troops that are
the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
"Iran's military is formidable
enough to protect its borders [during conventional war] within the Gulf region
states but would have difficulty against a larger superior Western force or to
undertake operations beyond its borders," the official said.
"They have
looked at ways to enhance and modernize their warfighting capabilities to defeat
a superior conventional force," said the official, noting that Iranians have
been developing new naval weapons.
The official said Iran feels
pressured by the presence of U.S. military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan "but
will avoid direct conflict with the U.S. while exerting their influence in other
Gulf Arab states."
Anthony Cordesman, a military specialist with the
Center for Strategic and International Studies, said advanced conventional
forces are expensive and difficult to operate for states such as Iran.
Instead, Iran is shifting to specialty weapons.
"Iran very
clearly is structuring its revolutionary guards, some elements of its
conventional forces and a good part of its navy for asymmetric warfare," he told
a recent House Armed Services Committee hearing.
"And that includes the
ability to at least temporarily threaten oil facilities in the Gulf and Iran's
neighbors."
Mr. Eisenstadt said Iran has emerged as a key regional power
without the forces that have defined such power in the past.
With a few
exceptions, the Iranians have not built up large ground forces with tanks and
armored vehicles.
The one exception is Iran's long-range unguided
rockets, which have been built indigenously. Some of the new long-range rockets
can travel up to 124 miles.
Daniel Byman, director of the Center for
Peace and Security Studies, told the House hearing that Iran's development of a
nuclear weapon is likely to be completed in the next 10 years.
Although
Iran might not use its nuclear weapons, "the danger is that Iran can become more
aggressive in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf states, more aggressive in
supporting terrorists against Israel, secure in the knowledge that the nuclear
weapon protects it from U.S. retaliation," he said.
Beginning in the
1990s, Iran began buying and building fast-attack boats, including some equipped
with Chinese-made C-802 anti-ship cruise missiles.
North Korea also has
sold Iran large numbers of patrol boats and semi-submersibles, vessels that can
be used as part of Iran's covert-action military capabilities.
Iran also
has three Russian-made Kilo-class submarines that could be used to sink large
ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, where most oil from the Persian Gulf
passes.
Large-scale mine warfare capabilities also have been developed
that could be used against shipping in the Gulf.
Iran also uses its
clandestine support for international terrorism, through arming and supporting
such groups as Hezbollah, as power projection and deterrence, Mr. Eisenstadt
said.
"You don't need a lot of that to cast a very long shadow in that
area."
Edward Walker Jr., president of the Middle East Institute, said
Iran poses the greatest challenge to the U.S. in the region.
"But Iran
is not going to be challenging us unless we actually take military action in
Iran," Mr. Walker told the House hearing. "At that point, all bets are off."
Iran's ground forces are thought to include about 350,000 regular
troops, up to 1,600 tanks, 1,400 other armored vehicles and as many as 3,000
artillery pieces, including multiple rocket launchers
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''
France, U.S. warn
of UN Security Council action if Iran refuses nuclear talks
By The Associated Press, Haaretz
14/10/2005
Isralert.com source PARIS - France and the United States urged Iran on Friday to restart talks
over its nuclear program and warned that the option of referring Tehran to the
United Nations Security Council for possible punishment remains
open.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said "we strongly
encourage Iran" to seek a diplomatic solution with France, Britain and Germany,
which led European negotiations with Iran until it effectively broke off the
talks in August.
"The Iranians need to get involved in negotiations and
restore the confidence of the international community that they are not trying
to build a nuclear weapon," Rice said after meetings with French President
Jacques Chirac and his foreign minister.
The French minister, Philippe
Douste-Blazy, said France and the United States agree on the way forward for
discussions with Iran. But he also underlined the need for firmness, saying that
the threat that Iran could be referred to the UN Security Council is
real.
He said a civilian nuclear program in Iran should not need to be
accompanied by fuel-making facilities, because Russia has offered to supply Iran
with nuclear fuel. Washington fears that Iran wants to enrich uranium to make
nuclear weapons, not to fuel civilian reactors as it claims.
"No civilian
nuclear program can justify the fuel cycle," Douste-Blazy said.
Rice said
the international community "has no reason to trust" that Iran "would deal
responsibly with the fuel cycle."
Last month, the 35-nation board of the
UN atomic watchdog agency approved a resolution that could lead to Iran's
referral to the UN Security Council for violating a nuclear arms control treaty,
unless Tehran eases suspicions about its nuclear activities.
Rice said
the international community must make clear to Iran that while dialogue is
possible so, too, is referral to the UN.
"It is a course that is
available to the international community and it is therefore important that Iran
negotiate in good faith," she said.
Douste-Blazy said the option of UN
action must be "totally credible" and "must remain sufficiently dissuasive" to
convince Iran to give up its sensitive nuclear activities.
''''''''''''''''''''''''
U.S. briefs multiple nations on Iran's nuclear warhead
program
Isralert.com source: Geostrategy-Direct, www.geostrategy-direct.com, October 18, 2005
LONDON - Diplomatic sources said Iran installed an empty nuclear warhead
on the Shihab-3 intermediate-range ballistic missile for two tests in mid-2004.
The warhead appeared similar to a Soviet-based ICBM that Moscow deployed in the
1960s.
The United States has briefed several nations and the
International Atomic Energy Agency on an Iranian program to develop a nuclear
warhead for the Shihab-3. The sources said the U.S. briefers asserted that from
2001 to 2003 Iran designed and developed a circular warhead that could detonate
at an altitude designed to ensure optimal damage.
The sources said that
in August the U.S. delegation briefed such countries as China, India, Russia,
and South Africa ahead of last month's IAEA board of governors meeting in
Vienna. The briefing helped persuade some members to either support or abstain
in the vote on a British resolution to refer the Iranian nuclear file to the
United Nations Security Council. India supported the British resolution, which
did not set a date for the submission of the Iranian file.
The Iranian
program, termed Project 111, was commissioned by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps, the sources said. They said the Iranian Defense Ministry's Aerospace
Industries Organization conducted work on the Shihab-3 warhead.
Iran has
designed a Shihab-3 circular warhead that would explode at a height of 600
meters, the sources said. They said the IAEA and several member nations were
shown Iranian blueprints as well as data on tests of the Shihab-3 warhead's
so-called black box.
In July the U.S. gave IAEA Director-general Mohammed
El Baradei the first briefing concerning Iran's purported nuclear warhead. The
U.S. delegation urged El Baradei to demand information from Iran on the warhead
and interview the purported chief of Project 111, Mohsen Fakrizadeh. |
covered up Saddam's barbarity for years to maintain "access";
