Real or not, Iranian missile fire must stop: US
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States Thursday cast doubt on the strength of Iran's claims to have test-fired a whole barrage of missiles over two days, and urged Tehran to cease immediately all provocative acts.
Iran appeared to have fired only a single missile on Thursday, not a second round of missiles as Iranian media reported, and seven on Wednesday not nine as claimed, a senior defense official told AFP.
The United States had detected the launch of seven missiles on Wednesday, including a Shahab-3 missile said to be capable of striking Israel, the official said, asking to remain anonymous.
"There appears to have been one missile fired today, but that may well have been one that failed the day before, and they finally got operational and launched today," the official said.
Amid heightened tensions, the administration of President George W. Bush again renewed its commitment to resolving the standoff with Iran over its contested nuclear program peacefully.
But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Washington was ready to defend Israel and all its allies in the region and that it was stepping up deployments in the Gulf.
"We will defend American interests and the interests of our allies," Rice said, answering a question on an Iranian threat to "set fire" to Israel.
"We take very strongly our obligation to defend our allies and we intend to do that," she said at a news conference in Tbilisi.
The United States has been leading a push to impose a third round of sanctions on Iran for its refusal to end its uranium enrichment.
But White House spokesman Tony Fratto said: "What our goal is is to use diplomacy as best as possible to bring Iran to the table in a way that we can resolve this peacefully.
The missile "tests are in violation of, or the expansive use of ballistic missiles are in violation of UN Security Council resolutions," he added.
"We want to see them stop enriching uranium and we'd like to see them stop these provocative tests that only further isolate the Iranian people," Fratto added.
The Shahab-3 is advertised as having a 2,000 kilometer range (1,250 miles), which would put Israel, Saudi Arabia, and US military installations throughout the Middle East within striking distance.
But there were mounting doubts Thursday about the veracity of the Iranian claims of how many missiles it had launched.
One defense analyst in London told AFP that Iran had apparently doctored photographs of the missile test-firings and exaggerated the capabilities of the weapons.
Photographs published on the Iranian Revolutionary Guards website showed four missiles taking off from a desert launchpad.
But one of the missiles had apparently been added to the photograph using elements from the smoke trail and dust clouds from two of the other missiles.
Mark Fitzpatrick of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said: "It very much does appear that Iran doctored the photo to cover up what apparently was a misfiring of one of the missiles.
"The whole purpose of this testing was to send a signal so Iran both exaggerated the capabilities of the missile in their prose and apparently doctored the photos as well."
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell also agreed that the Iranian missile shots were intended as "a show of force to intimidate their neighbors" rather than a test of new capabilities.
"This operation seems much less about testing than trying to flex their muscles in public," he said.
"All these capabilities had been tested before. This appears to be much more for impact on the public than it was an attempt to test these capabilities," he said.
The Iranian tests have raised new fears that the Islamic republic has diverted what it says is a peaceful nuclear program towards enriching uranium with the view of making a nuclear bomb.
But despite the mounting rhetoric, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday he did not feel the two countries were close to open conflict.
His words were echoed Thursday by Fratto, who said: "We hope that there's sufficient communication from everyone involved and that they're seeing these things in a clear-headed way and thinking in a clear-headed way also."
