Iran Threatens Missile Attacks On US Targets

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 9-17-2007 | David Blair

[blam]

Iran threatens missile attacks on US targets

By David Blair, Diplomatic Correspondent
Last Updated: 11:33pm BST 17/09/2007

Iran threatened to fire long-range missiles at American targets in the Middle East yesterday as the war of words between Teheran and the West continued to escalate.

A senior commander of the Revolutionary Guard, the largest component of the Islamic republic's armed forces, chose this moment to outline the capability of his country's ballistic missiles.

The Shahab-3 rocket has a range of 1,250 miles, allowing it to strike an array of Western targets across the Middle East.

"Today the Americans are around our country but this does not mean that they are encircling us. They are encircled themselves and are within our range," said Gen Mohammed Hassan Koussechi.

"If the United States is saying that they have identified 2,000 targets in Iran, then what is certain is that it is the Americans who are all around Iran and are equally our targets," he told the official IRNA news agency.

Gen Koussechi added: "We have reached capacities that allow us to hit the enemy at a range of 2,000 kilometres."

A wide array of possible targets faces Iran across the Gulf. Dubai, filled with Western companies, tourists and expatriates, is only 105 miles away.

Iran's armed forces already occupy Abu Musa, an island claimed by the United Arab Emirates, 40 miles from Dubai.

Other potential targets include the oilfields in Saudi Arabia's Eastern province, the headquarters of America's Central Command in Qatar and the main harbour of the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus is also in range.

Tension over Iran's nuclear programme is now building. Teheran continues to defy three UN resolutions by enriching uranium, which could produce the essential material for a nuclear bomb.

Later this month, America will probably seek the Security Council's support for a new resolution imposing more sanctions on Iran.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has toughened France's approach towards Teheran, with Bernard Kouchner, his foreign minister, giving warning at the weekend that the world should "prepare for the worst and the worst is war".

Teheran responded yesterday by accusing Mr Sarkozy of being an American stooge.

Iran is enriching uranium using centrifuges. It aims to install 3,000 at the underground nuclear plant in Natanz.

Once it has succeeded — and the technical barriers are formidable — Iran would need about one year to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one bomb.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has reached a new agreement with Iran designed to lay to rest any fears that Teheran is developing a nuclear bomb.

But Western diplomats say the IAEA agreement contains one flaw — it does not specify that Iran must stop enriching uranium. However, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the IAEA, said that any talk of war was "hype". He added: "People need to bear with us."

• American forces yesterday captured 12 Iraqis who they accuse of smuggling weapons from Iran. The men, who were detained in Baghdad, had prepared and stockpiled an especially lethal variety of roadside bomb, said the US military.

[sono]

Aquavelvajad is Bluffing. He's making a big mistake getting into a game of Texas Hold'em with a real Texan. He could ask Saddam how that works out, but ...

[mamelukesabre]

An egyptian I knew in grad school once told me that qat was so widespread in the saudi peninsula that it virtually shut down the entire economy wherever there wasn’t a suitable oil well. According to him, what made it so bad was the fact that there was no processing required at all. Opium, Cocaine, etc, require much expertise and processing. But apparently qat is a leaf that you pluck from a bush and put in your mouth...way too simple.

What’s amazing to me is that all these things and alcohol and tobacco are all frowned upon by islam. Yet the only one you get executed for is alcohol...the most difficult one to produce. Why is that? Could it be that it is the only one that they can’t produce themselves due to lack of technology and it’s all imported from the west?

It makes one wonder, no?

[Army Air Corps]

Qat (or Khat) is, according to reports from folks who have been there, an odd little plant. You have to chew wads of the stuff to get any effect. When it “kicks in”, though, it can be disorienting. I recall P.J. O’Rourke’s writings about Somalia and how the gunmen would chew qat all day and get thoroughly buzzed by late afternoon. Imagine scores of young men weaving all over dirt roads in their technicals wielding automatic rifles while gooned on this stuff.

[brushcop]

Yes, but remember: his own people convicted him in a court of their own, in a new government of their own that they were able to form because of U.S. SOLDIERS/SAILORS/MARINES/AIRMEN/COAST GUARDSMEN and NO ONE ELSE, not Pelosi, Shumer, Kennedy, etc. ad nauseam, REAL Americans God bless them all, those who wear the uniforms of our fantastic Armed Forces.

[epow]

Tension over Iran's nuclear programme is now building. Teheran continues to defy three UN resolutions by enriching uranium, which could produce the essential material for a nuclear bomb.

How long are we goings to sit around flapping our lips about Iran's threats and not doing anything to stop Ahmadinnerjacket and the fanatical Mullahs from acquiring nukes? Everyone knows that 10 minutes after Iran gets a nuke out the assembly room door it will be strapped on to a North Korean or Russian missile and fired at Tel Aviv. Why wait around wringing our hands until a million innocent people are incinerated before stopping those maniacs?

MAD (mutual assured destruction) doesn't deter idiotic fanatics like that, they want to die for their moon god Allah so why not give them what they want before they take a million people with them who don't want to go? If we had taken out Hitler and his brown shirted goons when he first announced his intention to conquer the world, maybe 50 million people wouldn't have died because of WWII.

Surely we have one or two missile launching subs on station in the Indian ocean near enough to Tehran to do the job if and when the order ever goes out. It's very, very lucky for the Mullahs and Ahmadinnerjacket that the famous red button is in Bush's desk instead of mine. I'm not a killer and I don't want to kill anybody anywhere, but I would take out Iran's nuke facilities in a NY minute along with the people in them and others nearby in order to save a few million lives of innocent people who aren't a threat to Iran or any other Islamic hellhole.

[Cementjungle]

Sounds like our little “leaks” are keeping these idiots awake at nights.

[shield]

WOW...these guys really don't want to do that. They'll be smashed like a bug. Very quickly...yikes. Look at just what happened to Syria...after months and months of work putting this together...in a matter of less than an hour it's all gone...Israelis' had NO trouble whatsoever...

These guys are caught up in a fanatical vision....thinking allah will be on their side...allah is the devil and the devil has come to kill, steal and destroy...Jesus came to give us life and give it more abundantly...

[Toliy]

The geo positioning sats belong to the US. They were originally military only. Would our military planners have been so dumb as to not make them capable of encrypting the data in just such an event as this??

The NAVSTAR Global Positioning System indeed supports two codes: a civilian and an encrypted military. Initially, the system also featured Selective Availability, which introduced random errors of up to 100 meter uncertainty to the civilian signal. However, Gulf War I placed such a demand on GPS devices, that the military was forced to use civilian devices and disabled Selective Availability.

Following pressure by the civilian sector (and the FAA), on May 1st, 1990 Clinton issed an executive order to set the Selective Availability error to 0 (essentially turning it off). From the point of view of civilian GPS industry, this isn't as bad as it sounds: we now depend on GPS in everything from fire fighting to emergency response to ship navigation.

The US military has since then developed methods of jamming GPS sattelites locally over an operational area, denying the enemy use of the system.

GPS Wiki

[Prophet in the wilderness]

President Bush & Company have been planning this from day one once he entered office, the pieces of the puzzle have been put into place since Jan 2001, and now we see the final pieces coming together at a faster pace.

[Army Air Corps]

I seriously hope so. And I pray that the braying jackasses in congress don’t try to stop us from doing what needs to be done.

[Waryone]

I guess Ahminajihad has his spider hole all picked out.

[donnab]

I understand about the boys being so close...my son is in the Air Force and so is his wife. I think the minute they make a move to strike we will be all over them. I believe also that Bush is lining the ducks in a row with allies that we have had and allies that will be new partners in this as they see what the stakes are for themselves. We are watching them very closely, and I dont believe that their power is as they claim. Why so quiet about Syria if so...they would have struck back at Israel but were left stunned by the depth and unpreparedness of the attack.

[RobinOfKingston]

The US military has since then developed methods of jamming GPS sattelites locally over an operational area, denying the enemy use of the system.

Cool! They didn't fall asleep in class.

[TheBattman]

I have a question.... and this requires some soul-searching...

Does the US have the guts to actually pull the trigger on some nukes if Iran were to strike first? I truly question if we have the intestinal fortitude. AT this point, I am wondering if we even have what it takes to carry out any real conventional attack on Iran. We have let them go unabated for too long, and now Russia is knocking off the rust from their war machine.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

They want Pres. Bush to take care of this before the summer of 08. That way, the problem is solved and they can criticize him and Republicans for not having negotiated, for being hegemons and war-mongers. They truly are despicable.

[doc1019]

I believe that as long a Bush is in office and a Nuke situation happens, retaliation would happen. Who knows his mind, just can’t envision any other response.

Anything short of a Nuke event … I believe or Pres will wilt. Don’t get me wrong, I love our Pres. and believe that he is the God ordained Pres. for our time … however; I don’t believe that he would call down a Nuke revenge strike without a first strike.

[parisa]

El baradai’s wife is an Iranian whose uncle is an influential Iranian molla.

[From the Wilderness]

Iran’s bluster is nothing more than the pseudo-machismo threats thrown out by all second rate powers in every place in every age. Make no mistake, they are well aware that they would cease to exist as a national intity within days of an attack on American interests. If the anti-Bush screamers in this country open their brains for a moment they may possibly realize that there is a reason for our military presence in that part of the world. It’s called “forward deployment” and the powers that be are happy (relieved actually) to have it interpreted as an American greed for oil. Iran is a captive nation, as is most Muslim societies, buying time in the hopes that Russia and China will soon be strong enough to preclude an American retaliatory strike anywhere in the region for fear of world holocaust. (It’s perhaps a bit surprising that the French of all people have lifted the corner of the veil, and one cannot help but suspect that they may have a sense of what’s actually going on there). The Brits on the other hand, who were initially thought to be aware turn out not to be (apparently)! The other side of that coin of course is that American planners are well aware of the Iranian tactic, and are weighing options to instigate a confrontation before a Sino/Russian alliance would make it too risky. It’s an impossibility to protect our sitting duck naval forces there, they are triggers, nothing more, the same as American forces deployed in South Korea, whose purpose is upon their destruction, to give us a moral excuse for attack. The situation developing in that region is dangerous beyond the average American’s willingness to consider, and without having access to the oil reserves under Iraq our entire economy could collapse within weeks of all out embargo. The 73 squeeze was small potato’s compared with a complete shutdown of all middle east oil supplies. Most of us in this country are hopelessly out of touch with world political reality. When we care more about OJ Simpson or Paris Hilton’s latest escapades somebody better have the presence of mind to ask “what’s wrong with this picture”! Since I’m a Libertarian I don’t give a rats ass about Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or Fred Thompson, they are your creations, not ours. These people who have to spend millions and millions of dollars to convince us to put them in charge of the greatest force in the present world, are absolutely the very last people on earth who should be there! We need to conscript our greatest thinkers, not reward our greatest bullshitters. The dark clouds are gathering, and we stand and watch indifferently!

[Popocatapetl]

“Air attacks are perfectly capable of destroying Iranian nuclear capability forever.”

Iran is 630,000 square miles in area. From anywhere in Iran, a two-stage Shahab-4 missile could carry a nuclear weapon to any target I named. Iran claims to have 600 Shahab-3 missiles which *might* be able to carry a plutonium bomb a shorter distance.

Again, my axiom is based NOT on destroying their uranium enrichment, but that they don’t even *need* uranium enrichment, that it is to some extent a ruse to buy time in which to assemble nuclear weapons with North Korean nuclear material.

So many of those 2,000 targets would be nowhere near where the Iranians had prepositioned missiles. And I can’t even guess if the Iranians have prepositioned any Shahab-5 or Shahab-6 missiles (North Korean Taepodong-2) out of harm’s way.

Either of those would be able to carry a nuclear weapon deeply into Europe.

So you may have all the confidence in the world that US air power can continually pound Iran into subservience, but my point of view is that you had better hit every single one of both their weapons and their delivery systems, or else.

[Texas Songwriter]

Any attack we perform against Iran will immediately be explained by dems and MSM as a provocation by Bush. The dems do not seek victory, they seek power and will do so to the detriment of the US. I do not believe we have the nutsac to do it. As a nation we have imbibbed the noxious ale of political correctness, and it may be our undoing.