Iranian Missile Site?
Disturbing news:
The secret site where Iran is suspected of developing long-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching targets in Europe has been uncovered by new satellite photographs.
The imagery has pinpointed the facility from where the Iranians launched their Kavoshgar 1 “research rocket” on February 4, claiming that it was in connection with their space programme.
Analysis of the photographs taken by the Digital Globe QuickBird satellite four days after the launch has revealed a number of intriguing features that indicate to experts that it is the same site where Iran is focusing its efforts on developing a ballistic missile with a range of about 6,000km (4,000 miles).
A previously unknown missile location, the site, about 230km southeast of Tehran, and the link with Iran’s long-range programme, was revealed by Jane’s Intelligence Review after a study of the imagery by a former Iraq weapons inspector. A close examination of the photographs has indicated that the Iranians are following the same path as North Korea, pursuing a space programme that enables Tehran to acquire expertise in long-range missile technology.
Geoffrey Forden, a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that there was a recently constructed building on the site, about 40 metres in length, which was similar in form and size to the Taepodong long-range missile assembly facility in North Korea.
Avital Johanan, the editor of Jane’s Proliferation, said that the analysis of the Iranian site indicated that Tehran may be about five years away from developing a 6,000km ballistic missile. This would tie in with American intelligence estimates and underlines why President Bush wants the Polish and Czech components of the US missile defence system to be up and running by 2013.
Now, it’d be nice if 10,000 liberals out there would read this and suddenly realise what a bunch of dunces they’ve been…and how President Bush has been right all along…both about Iran’s membership in the “Axis of Evil”, and about the need for SDI. We won’t get that, of course, but we can still dream about it…
Meanwhile, what do we do about this?
One’s first inclination is to give the Iranians a demonstration in accurate missile targeting and blow the place sky high. But then one thinks this might be too harsh, so one goes and makes a sandwich and comes back to the blog ready to put out some non-blow-sky-high alternative…but, even with calming sandwich in hand, blowing the place to smithereens still commends itself.
Will we do such a thing? Doubtful - but if there is a time to do it, now would be it. The world would condemn us - and then breath a hearty sigh of relief. International politics would be roiled, but in 9 months there will be a new US President who can say that EEEEVIL Bush did that, and can’t we all get along? Meanwhile, wink wink/nudge nudge, we’ll do it again if we have to. This is the real world, good people - and the Iranian government is currently commanded by men who have demonstrated their willingness to do evil deeds. Men so capable should not be allowed to obtain that much destructive force - this is not a matter of what Iran might have done to us, or what we might have done to this; this is entirely based on the objective factors that long-range missiles can be very destructive and the Iranian government has proven itself inclined to be wicked. We can’t reach out and destroy all the evil in the world, but such evil as we can attack, we should do so.
117 comments April 13th, 2008
