Iran to conduct military exercise aimed at protecting nuke sites

[brahmastra]

Tehran, Iran (CNN) -- Iran plans to launch a large aerial military exercise Sunday to prepare for any possible attack, state media said.
The five-day exercise was to cover a vast area in the country's northwest, west, south and southwest, Press TV said, citing Brig. Gen. Ahmad Miqani.
Iran's regular military and its elite Revolutionary Guards were to participate in the exercise against aerial attacks, especially against Iran's nuclear plants, according to Press TV.

The report did not offer further details about the scope of the exercise, but came as world powers have been strategizing about how to deal with Iran's apparent rejection of a key part of a nuclear deal.

The United States, Russia, China, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, along with the European Union, are trying to map a way forward on Tehran's controversial nuclear program. They seek to reduce international fears that Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons.

On Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said his country refused a request to send its partly enriched uranium abroad to be turned into material for medical research.
However, he said, Tehran might allow the nuclear material to be reprocessed inside Iran, the semiofficial ISNA news agency reported.
The nuclear deal, hammered out in October with the help of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is aimed to reduce the amount of raw material Iran has to build a nuclear bomb.
President Obama has warned of "consequences" if Iran does not accept the plan.
Iran says it intends to produce nuclear energy only for peaceful purposes, including civilian electricity and medical research.
Iranian media reported on Saturday that, according to a senior Iranian lawmaker, the country is capable of producing partly enriched uranium up to 20 percent, but had requested to buy the fuel from other countries instead. The move was described as a sign of good will.
"Given that Iran is capable of enriching uranium to a level more than 5 percent inside the country, it could well take a step to produce the fuel for its Tehran (research) reactor," said Kazem Jalali, of the parliament's national security and foreign policy commission, according to Press TV.
However, Iran sees buying the fuel as a better option, he said.

 

[brahmastra]

 

[RPK]

Iran Tests Air Defense System for Protecting Nuclear Plants

Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Iran says it is testing an air defense system this week in the largest military exercises it has conducted to assess the country’s ability to protect its nuclear plants.

The new anti-aircraft defense system will be tested in an operation called “Aseman-e-Valayat 2,” state-run Press TV cited Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi as saying in Tehran late yesterday after the drills began.

The operation will last five days and cover about 600,000 square kilometers (231,660 square miles) in the northwest, west, south and southwest, Brigadier General Ahmad Miqani, commander of the air defense headquarters, told Press TV. The area used for the exercises totals more than a third of Iranian territory.

Iran is under three sets of United Nations Security Council sanctions, the first imposed in December 2006, for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment for its nuclear program. The U.S. and its European allies suspect Iran of using the program to develop atomic weapons while the government in Tehran says the technology is for peaceful use, such as electricity production.

The government said in September it has developed a system capable of identifying and destroying stealth cruise missiles.

Vahidi said Iran intends to conclude an agreement with Russia to buy the S-300 surface-to-air missile system. The accord, worth an estimated $800 million, was signed in 2007, Press TV said. The defense minister earlier this month criticized Russia for delays in concluding the accord, it said.

The delivery of sophisticated Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles would “dramatically” improve Iran’s air defense capability, the U.S. Defense Department said a year ago.

Missile Tests

Iran has successfully tested surface-to-surface missiles, including a firing in September of its Shahab-3, which the military says has a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles), a distance that would put Israel within reach.

Iran will target the city of Tel Aviv in the event Israel begins a military attack, Press TV cited Mojtaba Zolnour, the representative in the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps for supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as saying two days ago.

“If the enemy tries its luck and fires a missile into Iran, our ballistic missiles would zero in on Tel Aviv before the dust settles on the attack,” Zolnour said, according to the report on Press TV’s Web site.

Israel said in August it expected the international community to take “substantive and prompt steps to halt Iran’s nuclear program.”

Right to Technology

Iran’s “primary” right to nuclear technology isn’t negotiable, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last week. The West must cooperate with the government in Tehran or face a more powerful Islamic republic, he said.

“Cooperating with Iran is in the interest of the West,” Ahmadinejad said. “Their disapproval will make Iran more powerful and more advanced.”

President Barack Obama has said time is running short for Iran to accept a deal offered by international negotiators.

Iran has yet to respond to the UN-brokered proposal under which Iran would ship most of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium abroad.

While Iran is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer, limited refining capacity forces it to import about a third of its gasoline.