Israeli expert doubts Iran claims of new missile

Berlin, Apr 01: An Israeli missile expert said yesterday (Mar 31, 2006) the missiles shown on Iranian television reported to be capable of evading radar did not the match the description, which he said sounded like Russian Iskander-E missiles.

Iranian state television said the country's armed forces successfully test fired a domestically-produced missile which can evade radar, a development analysts said could be worrying for Western forces in the Gulf.

''The description does not match the picture,'' Uzi Rubin, an Israeli missile expert and former director of Israel's Arrow missile defense programme, told Reuters from Tel Aviv. ''They could be bluffing.'' Hossein Salami, head of the Revolutionary Guards air force, told Iranian state television that the guards had successfully tested ''a new generation of missiles.''

He said the Iranian-produced missiles can evade radar, nti-missile missiles, can carry multiple warheads and that the ''technology is completely new, without copying any other missile systems that may exist in other countries.'' If it is true that Iran has such rockets, however, there is no way Tehran could have produced them without outside help, Rubin said.

''I definitely don't believe that the Iranians could cook up such a sophisticated missile indigenously,'' Rubin said.

Warheads

He said the description ''fits almost word-for-word the way the Russians describe the Iskander-E, with one exception -- the Russians don't claim the capability to 'hit several targets'.'' Rubin said that the Iranians could mean the rockets had so-called ''clustered warheads'', which is not something the Iskanders have.

The Iskander-E, also known as the SS-26, has a range of around 300 km (186 miles) and is extremely accurate, according to the Federation of American Scientists Web site (www.fas.org).

The Web site of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (www.nti.org), a U S think-tank, cites Russian media reports from April 2001 as saying that Iran was planning to purchase Iskander-E missile systems from Russia.

To the annoyance of the United States and European Union, Russia has made it clear it is willing to sell small-scale defensive missiles to Iran. Late last year, Moscow agreed to sell Iran tactical surface-to-air missiles that could be used to shoot down low-flying aircraft or guided missiles.

Russian dealers have been selling Iran other medium- and long-range missile technology as well, according to European and other Western intelligence sources.

Reuters

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