Anti-Iran Info-Op Goes "Ballistic"

One never has to look too far to come upon scary news about the capabilities and intentions of Iran. A person who was inclined to believe in conspiracies could almost imagine a co-ordinated effort by nefarious parties to constantly trumpet sinister information about the reviled Islamic Republic.

Iran test-fired a new missile on Friday that it said could carry multiple warheads and evade radar systems.

The air force chief of the Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami, said the missile, the Fajr-3, was made in Iran with "very advanced" features.

It can carry several warheads, and "can also evade enemy's most sensitive radar systems," he told state television. "It can avoid antimissile missiles and strike the target."

A State Department spokesman, Adam Ereli, said Friday that the administration did not have any technical details about the missile, but that the test showed that Iran had "a very active and aggressive military program."

An Israeli missile expert quoted by Reuters expressed skepticism, however, saying Iran "could be bluffing."

When even Israel publicly questions a detail of the scare-mongering, that really says something.

The expert, Uzi Rubin, a former director of the Arrow missile defense program, said if it was true that Iran had such rockets, there was no way it could have produced them without outside help.

That's better, the missile has to be a product of the larger "Axis of the Freedom Haters."

The display of military force came two days after the United Nations Security Council demanded that Iran stop its nuclear enrichment program within one month. The foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, brushed off the demand...

Iran started its arms program in 1980 when the war with Iraq broke out. Since 1992 Iran has produced its own tanks, armored personnel carriers, missiles and fighter planes.

This doesn't sound good. Since they are freedom haters (Muslims), can't we just declare that they have no right to produce weapons of any kind?

No? Well it was worth a shot.

The United States has expressly declared that it has adopted a "preventive war" doctrine, the questionable "we won't wait for them to hit us again" formulation. This next bit fits right in:

The Fajr-3, which means "victory" in Farsi, can reach Israel and U.S. bases in the Middle East, Iranian state media indicated. Gen. Hossein Salami, the air force chief of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, did not specify the missile's range, saying how far it can travel depends on the weight of its warheads.

But state-run television described the weapon as "ballistic" -- suggesting it has a range comparable to that of Iran's existing ballistic rocket, which can travel about 1,200 miles and reach arch-foe Israel and U.S. bases in Iraq and the Persian Gulf region.

The U.S. Air Force is probably getting ready to deploy the B-52s to Diego Garcia any day now.