Iran said it has successfully test-fired short-range missiles during military drills by the elite Revolutionary Guard, just days after the U.S. warned Tehran over a newly disclosed underground nuclear facility was secretly building. Iran reportedly also tested a multiple missile launcher for the first time. Sorry, but this is an intimidation tactic by this country and should not be tolerated. The tests come two days after President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French premier Nicolas Sarkozy warned the country that it must open the nuclear site to international inspection or face harsher international sanctions, to which they agreed. Wow, I am sure they are scared. The problem is North Korean leader Kim Jong Il repeatedly defied the warnings of the Western powers and still launched missiles. We all know that Iran's nuclear program isn't meant for peaceful purposes, but to create hostilities.
By U.S. estimates, Iran is one to five years away from having a nuclear weapons capability, although U.S. intelligence also believes that Iranian leaders have not yet made the decision to build a weapon. Iran also is developing a long-range ballistic missile that could carry a nuclear warhead, but the administration said last week that it believes that effort has been slowed. That assessment paved the way for Obama's decision to shelve the Bush administration's plan for a missile shield in Europe, which was aimed at defending against Iranian ballistic missiles.
I am not advocating violence, but it seems that Iran wants another show of force by Israel in the same vein as 1981, when Israeli warplanes bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reaction and in 2007, Israel bombed a site in Syria that the U.S. said was a nearly finished nuclear reactor built with North Korean help that was configured to produce plutonium, which is one of the substances used in nuclear warheads. Iran is a strategic threat to Israel and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the destruction of Israel repeatedly. The last person you want to have a nuclear weapon is this nut, as well as Kim Jong Il.
Experts have estimated that Iran's current number of centrifuges could enrich enough uranium for a bomb in a year. Washington has been pushing for heavier sanctions if Iran does not agree to end enrichment. The Obama administration needs to stick to its guns and not back down.
