The Message in Tehran’s Missile Tests
Fox News, November 12, 2008
Alireza Jafarzadeh (Foreign Affairs Analyst)
Just a week after the
election and President-elect Obama’s reiteration that a
nuclear armed Iran is “unacceptable,” the ayatollahs’ regime
is putting its belligerence on display in back-to-back
missile tests, hoping to exact concessions from the West.
Aptopix Obama 2008
Reacting to Obama’s remark, former Revolutionary Guards
commander and current Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani reiterated
his regime’s unbending nuclear ambitions, and insinuated
that it is the United States that needs to change its
approach vis a vis Tehran’s nuclear drive. Larijani said
Obama “should understand that the change he talked about is
not a change of color or a superficial or tactical change.
The expectation is that these changes will be strategic.”
Tehran is facing mounting dissent, aggravated by factional
infighting and economic crisis. The regime believes the
missile tests are a show of might, to the world and
particularly to its fast-shrinking domestic base.
The missile tests are part and parcel of Tehran’s nuclear
weapons program. In February 2008, the main Iranian
opposition, National Council of Resistance of Iran, released
detailed information obtained by the Resistance network
inside Iran, confirming that Tehran is working on the
manufacture of nuclear warheads at a site called Khojir.
This heavily secured military and Defense Ministry site is a
vast, 120-square kilometer area southeast of Tehran. It is
riddled with various facilities and tunnels dedicated to
nuclear and missile projects. The project was codenamed 8500
and nicknamed the Nuri Industry. The warheads are being
designed for installation on Shahab 3 missiles, the most
advanced version of which has a range of 2,000 kilometers.
Iran’s military commanders have boasted that they have their
fingers on thousands of missile triggers, aimed at 32 U.S.
targets in the Middle East, and declared they will plunge
the region into “raging fire.”
Although the ayatollahs’ missile-rattling can hardly
disguise their growing political weakness, if they are not
stopped we are looking at a nuclear-armed state-sponsor of
terrorism with an aggressive agenda that extends beyond
neighboring Iraq. The next administration needs to recognize
this fact, with finality.
Alireza Jafarzadeh is a FOX News Channel Foreign Affairs
Analyst and the author of "The
Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear
Crisis" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Jafarzadeh has revealed Iran's terrorist network in Iraq and
its terror training camps since 2003. He first disclosed the
existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility and the
Arak heavy water facility in August 2002.
