Group items tagged

The Iranian president had been campaigning in the province where the launching took place, and he promised that “in the near future we will launch bigger rockets with bigger reach.” He told a crowd that with its nuclear program, Iran was sending the West a message that “the Islamic Republic of Iran is running the show,”

Its range — believed to be more than 1,200 miles — is comparable to the liquid-fueled Shahab III, which Iran first obtained from North Korea. But a solid-fuel rocket, experts said, can be stored in mountains, moved around and reassembled, and fired on shorter notice, and thus could be harder for Israel or other nations to target.

Mr. Vick added that Tehran test-fired an even longer-range missile that used solid fuel, the Ashura, in late 2007 and several times afterward.“They’re designing a whole family of solids to replace their liquids,” he said in an interview.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told a Senate panel that she was concerned about a series of developments in Iran that could set off an arms race in the Middle East. She warned that if Iran obtained a nuclear capacity in the next several years, it would constitute an “extraordinary threat,” saying, “Our goal is to persuade the Iranian regime that they will actually be less secure” if it moves ahead with its nuclear program.

Mrs. Clinton was giving voice to a growing concern among administration officials, who have now had time to review the intelligence, that Iran seems to have made significant progress in at least two of the three technologies necessary to field an effective nuclear weapon. The first is enriching uranium to weapons grade, now under way at the large nuclear complex at Natanz. The second is developing a missile capable of reaching Israel and parts of Western Europe, and now the country has several likely candidates. The third is designing a warhead that will fit on the missile.

The greatest mystery surrounds the warhead program, which intelligence agencies said in late 2007 had been halted at the end of 2003. Asked Wednesday whether he had seen additional evidence to indicate that the weaponization program had been restarted, Mr. Samore declined to comment.