TEHRAN, Iran – Iran test-fired dozens of missiles, including the Shahab-3 that can reach Israel, in military maneuvers yesterday that it said were aimed at putting a stop to the role of world powers in the Persian Gulf region.
The show of strength came three days after U.S.-led warships finished naval exercises in the Gulf that Iran branded as “adventurist.” Iran remains locked in dispute with the West over its nuclear program, which Washington says is geared to producing atomic weapons but Tehran says is only for generating electricity.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she thought the Iranians “are trying to demonstrate that they are tough.”
“The Iranians also, I think, are not unaware that the security environment is one in which if they actually were to do something Iran would suffer greatly, and so I think they probably understand that,” she said on the Bill Cunningham radio show on WLW Cincinnati. “They are trying to say to the world, 'You are not going to keep us from getting a nuclear weapon.' The world has to say to them, 'Yes, we will.' ”
Iranian state television said several kinds of missiles were tested, and broadcast footage of them being fired from mobile launchers.
Also yesterday, Iran's competition for cartoons mocking the Holocaust drew international reproach and seemed to make little impression at home, with not a single Iranian newspaper publishing the winning entries and people on the street saying it left them unmoved.
Iran awarded first prize – worth $12,000 – late Wednesday to Moroccan cartoonist Abdollah Derkaoui, who drew an Israeli crane erecting a wall of concrete blocks around the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, Islam's third-holiest site. The blocks bear sections of a well-known photograph of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz.
The competition was launched by the Hamshahri newspaper after a series of Danish cartoons on Islam's Prophet Muhammad provoked widespread indignation among Muslims earlier this year.
