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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Mideast: Israel and US to hold joint missile defence drill |
| 2009-04-15 |
| [ADN Kronos] Israel and the United States are due to hold a "massive" joint missile defence drill later this year to counter Iran's nuclear ambitions, Israeli daily The Jerusalem Post claims. The allies will test three different ballistic missile defence systems, the Arrow-2, as well as America's THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) and the ship-based Aegis ballistic missile defence system. "The Juniper Cobra exercise between EUCOM (US Military's European Command) and the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) will be the fifth and most complex exercise yet designed," Lt.-General Patrick J. O'Reilly told the US house appropriations committee's subcommittee on defence earlier this month. Israeli defence officials cited by The Post said that the planned exercise would create conditions to enable "interoperability between Israeli and American ballistic missile defence in case the US government decided to deploy these systems here in the event of a conflict with Iran, like it did ahead of the Gulf War in Iraq in 1991." News of the joint exercise - termed Juniper Cobra - was revealed less than a week after the US and Israel test-fired the Arrow-2 missile defence system capable of destroying a Syrian or an Iranian medium-range Shihab-3 missile. The test launch last Tuesday was conducted jointly with the Israeli air force and the US missile defence agency which also funded the project. It took place near the Israeli port city of Ashdod. Israel Aircraft Industries and Chicago-based Boeing developed the project at a cost of more than one billion dollars. Israel has long accused Iran of training and financing anti-Israeli militant groups and with major western powers, accused Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons. But Iran has consistently said its uranium enrichment programme is only for peaceful purposes and designed to generate nuclear power for civilian use. Iranian hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly engaged in anti-Israel rhetoric, which has drawn condemnation from the United Nations and western nations. In 2005 he said that Israel should be "wiped off the map". Israel, however, neither acknowledges nor denies having a nuclear weapons programme. However, it is believed the Jewish state possesses between 75 and 200 nuclear warheads. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 ISRAEL FORUM > HEATING UP: EGYPT VERSUS HEZBOLLAH/IRAN. * OTOH, TOPIX > GOVERNOR RICK PERRY: STATE OF TEXAS COULD SECEDE FROM THE US. Uh, uh, THAAD + BMD-GMD pointing the wrong way/direction??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2009-04-15 22:39 |