Iran test-fires new missile

SEMNAN (Iran) – IRANIAN President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that Iran has test-fired a new medium-range surface to surface missile.

‘The defence minister (Mohammad Mostafa Najjar) told me today that we launched a Sejil-2 missile, which is a two-stage missile and it has reached the intended target,’ Mr Ahmadinejad said in a speech in the northern town of Semnan.

‘I was told that the missile is able to go beyond the atmosphere then come back and hit its target. It works on solid fuel,’ Mr Ahamdinejad added to cheers from the crowd.

He did not specify the missile’s range.

State television then showed footage of the launch of the missile which is similar in size to Iran’s medium-range Shahab 3.

In the past, Iran has often boasted of developing new weapons systems only to be met with scepticism from Western defence analysts.

Hawkish new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu has said Iran’s missile technology and controversial nuclear programme pose an existential threat to the Jewish state greater than any it has faced since its creation in 1948.

Iran insists that its nuclear programme is aimed solely at producing electricity for a growing population once its fossil fuels run out.

But Israel – which has the region’s sole if undeclared nuclear arsenal – suspects it is cover for a drive for the bomb.

The UN Security Council has imposed three packages of sanctions against Iran after it failed to heed successive ultimatums to suspend uranium enrichment, the process which makes fuel for nuclear power stations but in highly extended form can also produce the fissile core of an atomic bomb. — AFP

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