“The construction of the Ashura missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers,” is “part of the Defense Ministry’s accomplishments,” the state-run Fars news agency today quoted Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar as saying.
Iran’s addition to its missile arsenal is likely to increase tensions between the government in Tehran and the Bush administration. Iran is defying United Nations Security Council demands to suspend a nuclear program that the U.S. and several major European countries suspect is cover for the development of a bomb.
The U.S. government, while insisting that it wants a diplomatic solution to the dispute, hasn’t ruled out military measures to force Iran to abandon the program, which Iran says is designed to generate electricity. The government in Tehran has threatened to retaliate if it is attacked.
The U.S. has also repeatedly accused Iran, the second- biggest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, of fomenting violence in neighboring Iraq by training and financing insurgents there and stoking violence between the country’s Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities, charges denied by Iran.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration has been marked by a hardening of the country’s anti-U.S. stance, and he has prompted international condemnation with speeches in which he reiterated Iran’s official opposition to Israel’s existence.
Shahab-3 Missile
Iran’s military said in November last year that it successfully test-fired its Shahab-3 missile, which the country said had a 2,000-kilometer range. During a Sep. 22 military parade though, an announcer said the Shahab-3 had a 1,300- kilometer range, Agence-France Presse reported at the time. Iran also showed on that day a missile named Ghadr-1, with a range of 1,800 kilometers, the news agency said.
Ashura is for Shiites a day of mourning in commemoration of the death in battle of Imam Hossein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.
