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July 3rd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Israel says it could attack Iran if diplomacy fails to force it to halt its
disputed nuclear energy programme. The United States also has military force
as a possible option but U.S. officials have repeatedly encouraged the
Israelis to be patient while new economic sanctions are implemented against
Iran.
The Islamic Republic announced the “Great Prophet 7” missile
exercise on Sunday after a European embargo against Iranian crude oil
purchases took full effect following another fruitless round of big power
talks with Tehran.
Iran’s official English-language Press TV said the Shahab 3 missile with a
range of 1,300 km (800 miles) – able to reach Israel – was tested along with
the shorter-range Shahab 1 and 2 and other missile classes.
“The main aim of this drill is to demonstrate the Iranian nation’s
political resolve to defend vital values and national interests,”
Revolutionary Guards Deputy Commander Hossein Salami was quoted by Press TV
as saying.
He said the tests were in response to Iran’s enemies who talk of a “military
option being on the table”.
“The manoeuvres are an answer to the rude words spoken against Iran,”
Fars news agency quoted him as saying.
Analysts have challenged some of Iran’s military assertions, saying it often
exaggerates its capabilities.
Senior researcher Pieter Wezeman of the Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute said Iran’s missiles were still relatively inaccurate and of
limited use in conventional warfare.
With conventional warheads, “their only utility is as a tool of terror
and no more than that,” he said by telephone.
He added, however, that they could be suitable for carrying nuclear warheads,
especially the larger ones.
Another think-tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said in
a 2010 report that all of Tehran’s ballistic missiles were “inherently
capable of a nuclear payload”, if Iran was able to make a small enough
bomb.
Iran denies Western accusations that it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons
capability. The world’s No. 5 oil exporter maintains that it is enriching
uranium only to generate more energy for a rapidly growing population.
Fars said dozens of missiles involved in this week’s exercises had been aimed
at simulated air bases and that Iranian-built unmanned drones would be
tested on Wednesday.
Iran repeated its claim it is reverse-engineering the sophisticated US RQ-170
drone that it says it brought down during a spying mission last year.
“In this drone there are hundreds of technologies used, each of which are
valuable to us in terms of operations, information and technicalities,”
General Amir Hajizadeh was quoted by the ISNA news agency as saying.
Tehran regularly states its claimed military dominance in the Gulf and has
jangled nerves across the oil industry, which is concerned about any
disruption in global crude supplies.
Iran has previously threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, through which
passes more than a third of the world’s seaborne oil trade, in response to
increasingly harsh sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies.
Wezeman said Iran had a large standing armed force, but that its weapons were
generally outdated. “And those weapons only get older and older and
they don’t have access to new technology because they are under a United
Nations arms embargo.”
In his first comments since the European Union oil ban took force, President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said sanctions would benefit Iran by lessening its
dependent on crude exports.
“We must see the sanctions as an opportunity … and which can forever
take out of the enemy’s hands the ability to use oil as a weapon for
sanctions,” Fars news agency quoted him as saying.
The EU embargo aims at pushing Iran to curb uranium enrichment that Western
countries say is aimed at developing an atomic weapons capability.
On Monday, a group of Iranian parliamentarians proposed a bill calling for
country to try to stop oil tankers shipping crude through the Strait of
Hormuz to countries that support sanctions against it.
However, the Iranian parliament is relatively weak, analysts say, and the
proposal has no chance of becoming law unless sanctioned by Iran’s clerical
supreme leader.
That is seen as unlikely in the near term given that Western powers have said
they would tolerate no closure of the Strait while Iranian leaders, wedded
to strategic pragmatism for the sake of survival, have said they seek no war
with anyone.
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