WHOA…
NYT: “Iran fired several missiles with a range of more than 1,000 miles during a military maneuver today, apparently to send a message to the United States and several of its allies in the Persian Gulf after they conducted naval exercises in the same area this week.”
The barrage is their response to US-led military maneuvers in the Arabian Gulf. This is exactly what North Korea gets incensed about, and why Pyongyang and Teheran both see WMDs as their only guarantee against US attacks. Key passages:
“Today’s exercises come at a particularly sensitive time for Iran and its troubled relationship with the United States, which says Iran’s nuclear program is intended to develop a weapons arsenal. Earlier this week, more than two dozen countries, including three Arab gulf states, practiced intercepting and searching vessels suspected of trafficking in unconventional weapons. The military maneuvers, conducted about 20 miles outside Iranian territorial waters, appeared to signal to Iran that an American coalition with regional states was intent on denying it access to nuclear, chemical and biological arms. Iran says that it has the right to develop its nuclear program for power, and a spokesman for the country’s parliamentary national security and foreign affairs council said today on ISNA that Iran intended to launch more centrifuge cascades after starting a second one recently. “We are preparing another centrifuge cascade and we plan to continue this until we become capable of providing our own nuclear fuel,†said the spokesman, Kazem Jalali. He said they would only be used for research and development.“
