Wednesday
9 Jul 2008
Iranian General “Our finger is always on the trigger”
By Annie Jacobsen in category U.S. Homeland Security
On Wednesday, Iran test-fired nine missiles, including the Shahab-3, during war games in the Persian Gulf which it called The Great Prophet III.
General Hossein Salami, commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard ground forces, oversaw the tests and had this to say:
"…our finger is always on the trigger and we have hundreds and even thousands of missiles ready to be fired against predetermined targets.”
Soon to join that ready-to-be-fired list: the nuclear bomb.
Iran said it was conducting the military exercises in response to threats from the U.S. and Israel. “We will chase the enemies on the ground and in the sky and we are able react strongly to enemy’s threats in shortest possible time,” Gen. Salami announced on state-run TV.
The Shahab-3 is a medium-range ballistic missile that can carry warhead to a target approximately 800 miles away. The Shahab-3 translates to Meteor-3, or Shooting Star-3 in Farsi.
According to the Federation of American Scientists, the Shahab missile is a derivative of the North Korean No-dong missile, which was developed by Iranian money and Soviet Gorbachev era technology.
CNN is also reporting that Iran is shelling Kurdish villages in Northern Iraq.