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Iran Rattles Its Missiles

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Posted on May 2, 2010
Iran's nuclear missile
AP / Vahid Salemi

Missile love affair: A Shahab-3 medium-range, road-mobile ballistic missile passes a reviewing stand in Tehran in 2005.

Iran claims it is about to deploy a new short-range missile defense system aimed at shooting down cruise missiles and is in the “design and production phase” of several other defensive systems. 

Analysts say all this missile-rattling is intended to send a message to fellow Persian Gulf Arab states that harbor U.S. military facilities. —JCL

Reuters:

Iran, whose nuclear dispute with the West has raised the possibility of new regional conflict, has developed a short-range defense system to combat Cruise missiles, its defense minister was quoted as saying on Sunday.

“A new short range anti-Cruise defense system with the capability to fire 4,000 rounds of bullets per minute has been produced at the defense ministry and soon will be inaugurated,” Ahmad Vahidi said on semi-official Fars news agency.

“We are at the design and production phase of various defense systems in the short, medium and long-range categories,” he added, citing the Mersad air defense and Shahin missile defense systems.

Cruise missiles are guided missiles that operate at low level to evade radar detection. They can fly up to supersonic speeds carrying either conventional or nuclear warheads.

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Samson's avatar

By Samson, May 3, 2010 at 9:05 am Link to this comment

The propaganda on this site is fascinating. 

Note the headline and the pictures and how they differ from the text in the story.

The text in the story talks of ‘short-range’ missiles.  Obviously of no threat to America, since Iran is on the other side of the world.  So, the propaganda artists have to work around this by trying to downplay that aspect.

Further, the text in the story reveals these are defensive weapons with the goal of shooting down cruise missiles aimed at Iran. 

So, note how this is made as scary as possible by a headline that refers to ‘rattling its missiles’.  This brings up images of a warlike country threatening the world, which of course is the exact opposite in meaning than the real story.

Note also how this is reinforced by using the images of much larger ‘medium ranged’ missiles with the story.  Again, the intent is clearly to both frighten and mislead.

The question is, why are they trying to scare and mislead you?

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MarthaA's avatar

By MarthaA, May 2, 2010 at 10:08 pm Link to this comment

I can’t see how any thinking person can consider that Iran’s leaders shouldn’t do what they can to protect their country from foreign threat after what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
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