Iran Test-fires New Missile, Israel, US Bases Within Reach

Iran said it test-fired a new generation of surface-to-surface missile on Wednesday and was ready to defend itself against any attacker.

Defence Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said the Sejil missile had ‘extremely high capabilities’ and was only intended for defensive purposes.

He said it had a range of close to 2,000 kilometres. That would enable it to reach Israel and US bases in the Gulf. “This missile test is in the framework of Iran’s deterrent doctrine,” the IRNA news agency quoted him as saying. “It will only land on the heads of those enemies,” said Najjar, without mentioning any country by name.

The US denounced Iran’s claimed missile test and warned Tehran to halt its ballistic missile programme ‘immediately’ amid a nuclear dispute with the West.

“We’ve consistently pointed out that Iran’s missile programme is a concern and this testing is another reminder of the importance of establishing a missile defence site in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend the US and Europe against a threat that is developing in Iran,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters. agencies

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Russia Welcomes Barack Obama With Deployment of Nuclear-Capable Missiles

The Kremlin gave Barack Obama a glacial welcome to the world stage when Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, ordered the deployment of nuclear-capable missiles on Nato’s borders for the first time since the Cold War.

In what appeared to be a deliberate attempt to rattle the president-elect, Mr Medvedev said that short-range Iskander surface-to-surface missiles would be stationed in Russia’s baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, which borders EU states Poland and Lithuania.

Delivering his most aggressively anti-American speech yet, Mr Medvedev said he was ordering the deployment in retaliation to a missile defence shield that the United States wants to build in central Europe by 2011.

In comments likely to unnerve the Obama camp, the Russian leader even hinted that he was prepared to use the missiles to destroy the shield, which is to be erected in Poland and the Czech Republic.

“I have approved a new configuration for the military forces of our country,” Mr Medvedev said in his first ever annual address to the two houses of the Russian parliament. “To neutralise – if necessary – the anti-missile system, an Iskander missile system will be deployed in the Kaliningrad region.”

Although the Iskander is normally equipped with conventional warheads, it can be modified to carry a nuclear payload.

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