By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Tuesday thatIran has the ability to launch a ballistic missile capable ofhitting sections of eastern and southern Europe.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, director of the MissileDefence Agency, told reporters he believes Iran now has amissile with a range of 2,000 km, but he declined to saywhether the weapon has been test-fired.
Iran said last week it conducted two missile testsinvolving a number of weapons including what Iranian statetelevision called a "new" Shahab-3 missile, a medium-rangemissile that could be used to strike Israel.
Tensions over Iran's missile arsenal and accusations fromthe United States and its allies that Tehran is pursuingnuclear weapons have roiled international financial marketswith fears of a possible military confrontation.
Iran denies it wants nuclear weapons and says its nuclearprogram is designed to produce electricity to increase itsoutput of oil and natural gas.
Older versions of the Shahab-3 have a 1,300-km range. But anew extended version is believed to have a range of up to 1,250miles, making it capable of hitting targets as far away asGreece, Serbia, Romania and Belarus.
Iran is also developing a solid-fuel missile known as theAshura with a range of 1,250 miles, according to the Pentagon.
U.S. officials and independent missile experts have saidlast week's tests involved no new or enhanced technology, oreven the latest generations of missiles known to be in Iran'sarsenal.
Obering did not dispute those assertions in a briefing forPentagon officials on Tuesday.
But his description of Iran's missile capability wasstronger than what U.S. officials have said up to now.
"The Iranians themselves are describing ... a 2,000-kmrange missile launch," Obering said of last week's tests,adding that Iran also claimed to have such a missile inNovember.
"I believe, based on what I have seen, that they have theability to do that and to continue to advance in the future,based on what I have seen so far from those (Iranian statemedia) reports and from the intelligence reports," he added.
"I won't go into detail as to what was fired when. That'ssomething I think the intel community should answer," he said.
The Pentagon's Defence Intelligence Agency, which monitorsmajor weapons threats to the United States and its allies, wasmore vague in its February 27 testimony to the Senate ArmedServices Committee.
"Iran continues to develop and acquire ballistic missilesthat can hit Israel and central Europe, including Iranianclaims of an extended-range variant of the Shahab-3 and a new2,000-km medium range ballistic missile called the Ashura," DIAdirector Army Lt. Gen. Michael Maples told the panel.
U.S. officials and analysts dismissed last week's missiletests as an angry Iranian response to recent military exercisesincluding an Israeli air exercise in June that some have calleda rehearsal for an attack on Iran.
The Bush administration has used concern about Iranianmissiles to press forward with plans for a missile defenceshield in Poland and the Czech Republic, capable of protectingboth Europe and the United States from attack.
Washington and the Czech Republic signed an agreement lastweek to place missile-tracking radar on Czech soil. U.S.officials are now hoping for a deal to station the system'sinterceptor missiles in Poland.
