Speaking to a crowd in the city of Semnan, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed Tehran has successfully test fired a medium-range, surface-to-surface ballistic missile with the ability to reach targets in Israel and the Persian Gulf region.
"Defense Minister [Mohammed Najjar] told me today that we launched a Sajjil-2 missile, which is a two-stage missile and it has reached the intended target," Ahmadinejad said, according to the BBC. Adding that the missile was "able to go beyond the atmosphere then come back and hit its target."
Iranian military authorities are apparently continuing their testing of the "Sajjil" class ballistic missile. On November 12, 2008, Iran announced a successful test launch of a Sajjil missile. However, U.S. officials doubted the success of the launch, claiming the test rocket suffered an internal failure during the early stages of its flight and traveled only 180 miles.
According to state-run Iranian media, "the Sajjil missile has a range of almost 2,000 kilometers and is different from Shahab-3 missile. It operates in two stages and uses solid fuel, whereas, Shahab-3 missile is one-stage operator and uses liquid fuel."
"We know that Iran is developing an extended version of the Shahaab-3 that could strike our allies and our friends from the middle east as well as southeastern Europe and to include some of our deployed forces," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman confirmed in November. "We've consistently pointed out that Iran's missile program is a concern and this testing is another reminder of the importance of establishing a missile defense site."
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#1
so what , is Israel and the US now supposed too cower before them and completely shut down the country of Israel and all US bases in the ME? I think they forget we have had missiles since the 50's that could wipe out their whole country
#2
"...is another reminder of the importance of establishing a missile defense site."
That would be a reminder to Europe, as it is the only place that was to have a permanent missile defense. Iraq forces are protected by both land and sea based PAC-3 missiles, which at one point numbered over 300.
And the closer you go to Israel, the thicker the defenses become.
Looks like Year 2010-2012, not unlike MSM-NET repor SOLAR MAX = FLARE(S) to occur during this period, is coming along as anticip, and 'twis gonna be HOT???
* 1980's JOE PISCOPO > SONG LYRIC = "HOT...HOT...
HOT..." in more ways than one, or even a few???
#4
ION PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUMS > INDIA SUCCESSFULLY TEST-FIRES NUCLEAR-CAPABLE AGNI-II MISSLE.
Lest we fergit, by 2030-2050 INDIA is anticipated to have not only one of the world's largest Muslim minorities, but also a latter more potently influential in NATIONAL GOVERNANCE/
AFFAIRS = POLICY-MAKING.
Broadly speaking, RUSSIA-CHINA-INDIA > RADICAL ISLAM only has to keep having BABIES = LARGE FAMILIES [AVG SIZE = 15? 15-PLUS?] to influence iff not de facto take over these already NUKULAAR STATES OF ASIA.
* SAME > CHINA'S ARMY SHOWS SIGNS OF RESISTANCE TO COMMUNISM/CHINA WARNS ARMY [PlA] AGZ WASTE, ILL DISCIPLINE, + CHINA-SRI LANKA STRATEGIC COOPERATION.
#5
Joe, even in India the Muslim birth rates are dropping.
Posted by: john frum ||
05/20/2009 19:25 Comments ||
Top||
#6
ISRAEL FORUM > IIRC ISRAEL HAS NO RELIABLE INTERCEPTOR TO DEFEND/PROTECT AGZ IRAN'S NEW MISSLE [Iranian offensive BMS 3 years? ahead of Israeli BMD]; + HIZBULLAH: US, ISRAEL SEEK TO DIVIDE ARABS FROM AGZ IRAN, + US CIA: "BIG TROUBLE" IFF ISRAEL ATTACKS IRAN ALONE.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has claimed that Iran has fired a new surface-to-surface missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers.
In a campaign speech in his hometown in northern Iran on Wednesday, Ahmadinejad said that the Sajjil-2 missile "hit its target." He said that the new model was propelled by solid fuel and was an improvement over the Shihab 3 missile.
Ahmadinejad's announcement came only a day after a report issued by a group of US and Russian scientists and experts predicted that it would take Iran six to eight years to develop a missile with a nuclear warhead and a 2,000-kilometer range. The report said it's "virtually impossible" to predict how long it would take the country to produce a modern intercontinental ballistic missile.
Without additional outside technology, the report said it would be "at least 10 to 15 years," adding that there was no evidence Iran has decided to build an intercontinental ballistic missile.
But we see how long it took them with the help of outside technology. North Korean, perhaps?
Pakistans ambassador to Iran, M.B. Abbasi, said on Monday that the Tehran summit of the Iranian, Afghan, and Pakistani presidents has been rescheduled for May 24. Ambassador Abbasi told the Tehran Times that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari informed him that the date of the summit had been set. The three presidents plan to hold discussions on ways to deal with extremism and drug trafficking in the region during the meeting, he added. The reconstruction of Afghanistan will also be on the agenda of the meeting.
The summit was originally scheduled for May 19 but was delayed due to the busy program of President Zardari. The three leaders met less than three months ago in the Iranian capital Tehran for a regional economic summit, along with the leaders and officials of other neighboring states. At that summit, the ten members of the Economic Cooperation Organization pledged to help rebuild Afghanistan and the Gaza Strip.
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Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani warned Arab countries on Monday not to pin their hopes on the Obama administration to help end Israels decades-long atrocities against Palestinians, saying that Washingtons traditional policy toward Palestine will not change.
Those who are waiting to see change in the U.S. conduct should know that there will not be any change in their policies toward Palestine, he said in a conference on Palestine in Tehran. "The U.S. officials have recently talked a lot about change but I do not seriously believe in these subjects and consider them more of a series of tactics. He also said a global hatred of the U.S. government has increased because of the countrys continued support for Israel.
Over the past sixty years various peace plans have been formulated but none of them have produced any positive results because they were not based on the realities on the ground, Larijani pointed out. He went on to say that new U.S. peace initiatives will not produce any new result since they are meant to pressure Arab states to recognize the Zionist regime and that peace is a secondary issue in these plans.
Larijanis remarks come soon after King Abdullah of Jordan told AFP in an interview on Saturday that the U.S. is expected to unveil a plan to restart Arab-Israeli peace negotiations.
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Less than three weeks before Lebanon's hotly contested election, Hizbullah chief thug Hassan Nasrallah warned his people on Monday night that a five-day IDF exercise scheduled to start at the end of the month could mean the Jewish state is preparing for "a new and unexpected war."
While he said he had no information that indicated this was the case, he added that "it is a possibility that cannot be ignored." He spoke in a televised speech.
From the secret lair, no doubt ...
Israeli officials talk of "unexpected reactions" when discussing such maneuvers with their people, "even though they know that at a minimum, no one will open a front by [firing] rockets or on the level of a wide and comprehensive military war," Nasrallah said. "So why are they speaking of this now?"
You mean like last time? Israelis won't get fooled again.
"This gives the impression that Israel is preparing for a security or military attack on something, and assume that this aggression will lead to sudden and unpredictable reactions."
Israeli diplomatic officials flatly rejected Nasrallah's hypothesis as internal political posturing. "These are pure fantasies taken right out of Nasrallah's beard to convince innocent Lebanese that he needs weapons to defend them against Israel rather than to dominate them," Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said.
A spokesman for UNIFIL said on Saturday that the IDF exercise was of "a defensive nature" and "not related to any development or any future occurrences, including Lebanon," the Lebanese news site Naharnet reported.
Nasrallah said during Monday's speech that Hizbullah planned to take "a set of preventive and precautionary measures" during the Israeli maneuvers to eliminate the opportunity for any military actions that targeted Lebanon. "We will be present, ready and alert" during the exercise, he said.
The Hizbullah leader also criticized the Lebanese government, which "bears the responsibility" for safeguarding its people, for failure to act to protect them against such a scenario.
At least one Western expert in Lebanon agrees that the speech was delivered for domestic political consumption ahead of the June 7 election, which is guaranteed to be a very close race. "I see this more as internal politics, attacking the government and reminding the electorate that Hizbullah is the only one safeguarding Lebanon from Israeli aggression and that the government is too powerless and weak and unwilling to do the right thing to defend it," the Western observer said.
In his speech, Nasrallah also said that Israel, which was created by the "plunder [of land], massacres, displacement and occupation, is not a legitimate entity" and can never be legitimate in any way. Israel "is the main reason for all the wars and calamities... and tensions and crises in the region," he said.
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Posted by: Steve White ||
05/20/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
well isn't that pretty much all Hezbullies do. prepare for war and i think Israel pretty much stays prepared
No dramatic changes are expected inside Lebanon if the Hizbullah-led opposition wins a majority in June 7's parliamentary election, partly because the Shi'ite organization is already a dominant force in the country, experts say.
"Any headline that comes out on June 8 or June 9 that says 'Hizbullah takeover in Lebanon' because of the opposition winning two or three [more] seats... will be the wrong description," Nadim Shehadi, a Lebanon expert at Chatham House in London said on Monday.
"The constitution is one of power-sharing. There are so many checks and balances and so many differences of opinion, it's not possible for a small group that has 10 or 15 percent of the parliament to impose any kind of control" over the country, Shehadi said.
As far as Israel is concerned, Hizbullah - despite the limitations on its power - already has the upper hand and does what it wants in Lebanon, something that is not expected to change after the election, Eyal Zisser, director of Tel Aviv University's Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, said on Tuesday. "We don't care about appointments in the ministries," he said. "We do care about the smuggling of weapons and [Hizbullah's] arsenal of rockets. This will stay as it is."
Indeed, Hizbullah has "already has demonstrated that it holds the balance of power on the ground" in Lebanon even as part of the opposition, said one Western observer in Lebanon. The only attempt to curb Hizbullah's military strength came in May 2008, when the government decided to clamp down on the group's communication's network, he said. "And we all saw the results of that; the takeover of West Beirut."
It is clear to everyone inside and even outside Lebanon "that you can't force Hizbullah to disarm," said the observer, who asked to remain anonymous.
A more effective approach would be to create the right conditions whereby the militant organization would no longer be able to justify maintaining its weapons, such as the forging of some sort of understanding between the United States and Iran, or the achievement of comprehensive peace between Israel and the Arab world, he said.
That is so clueless that he must be an expert. The Hezbies will never disarm, regardless of circumstances, because to do so means that all the parties in Lebanon will turn on them.
While the domestic consequences of a victory for the opposition are not expected to be significant, the main impact would be the perception of such a win in the region.
"If the opposition wins, that will be seen as a boost for the alliance of Iran and Syria and Hamas and Hizbullah, and Lebanon will be seen as moving back into that fold after moving away after [former prime minister Rafik] Hariri's assassination in 2005, and [it] will be seen as a blow" to US-backed states such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as well as Israel, in the context of confronting Iran, the Western observer said.
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Posted by: Steve White ||
05/20/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Well, I guess if I have to choose I'd take "Lose and remain dominant".
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Opponents of Iran's hard-line president have accused him of trying to buy votes before the June presidential election by handing out checks and free vegetables to the poor. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government has defended the payments, saying the checks for 500,000 and 1 million rialsabout $50 and $100have nothing to do with the election.
"No, no, certainly not!"
It has been distributing the money to poor familiesmost of them in rural areas and small townssince last year, and in recent weeks it broadened the distribution to include students and teachers. The government also announced that on May 10 it began making $80 payments to 5.5 million people in rural areas throughout Iran.
"Yeah, that's right, we're feeding the poor. And my wife Morgan Fairchild there in the burqa is helping me!"
Ahmadinejad's critics have seized on the payments as another opening to exploit one of his biggest vulnerabilities heading into the June 12 votediscontent over his handling of the faltering economy. They accuse him of using the cash to win votes from people hit hard by rising inflation and unemployment.
"Attempting to win people's vote through dispensing public assets is a dangerous phenomenon employed for the first time (by Ahmadinejad's government)," said a statement Tuesday by a reformist party called the Islamic Revolution Mujahedeen Organization.
Mohammad Reza Khatami, a former deputy parliament speaker, said, "Ahmadinejad's government has no plan for the country other than handing out checks for $100."
Which in Iran will buy a lot of votes ...
Politicians on both sides of the country's reformist-conservative political divide have said such payments promote a "begging culture."
The one conservative candidate challenging Ahmadinejad's re-election bid, Mohsen Rezaei, said the president should create jobs for young people rather than doling out money to them from state funds. "Don't hand out cash to the youth. Give them jobs with good income," he said in comments posted on his Web site on Monday. "The current economic conditions are harming the dignity of Iranians."
The leading reformist candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, said the latest payments are an affront to the dignity of Iranians on "the eve of an election." He said the money would be better spent by putting it into infrastructure projects.
The reformist daily Etemad-e-Melli, or National Confidence, said students protested the distribution of $50 checks at a university dormitory in Tehran on Sunday because they found them insulting. The semiofficial Mehr news agency, however, quoted Tehran University dean Farhad Rahbar as saying the students were angry because they wanted more money than the government was offering.
In recent weeks, the government has also distributed free potatoes in small towns. The government said the potatoes had nothing to do with election, saying it was a choice between distributing them or letting them rot.
Students at a campaign event for Mousavi in the central town of Yazd on Monday chanted, "We don't want a potato government" and "Death to potatoes," a play on the "Death to America" slogan common at rallies by hard-liners.
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Posted by: Steve White ||
05/20/2009 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani warned Arab countries on Monday not to pin their hopes on the Obama administration to help end Israels decades-long atrocities against Palestinians, saying that Washingtons traditional policy toward Palestine will not change.
