WASHINGTON - Iran raised the stakes in an already jittery Persian Gulf region yesterday by test-firing missiles that it said had a range sufficient to target Israel, U.S. forces in Iraq and southern Europe.
The launches came during a period of military elbowing and jostling, including an Israeli exercise last month said by some analysts to be a massive rehearsal for an air campaign against Iran's nuclear development facilities.
Both the U.S. and Iran have held military exercises in the region this week, and an Iranian threat to close the vital Strait of Hormuz if attacked was met with a sharp American response that no blockage of the strait would be tolerated.
FOR THE RECORD - A photograph of the test firing of missiles released by the public relations arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Sepah News, which ran on the front page of yesterday's editions of The Sun had been digitally altered. The Sun was unaware of this manipulation. The photograph above is the correct image, which shows one missile remaining in the launcher.
THE SUN REGRETS THE ERROR
But senior U.S. officials played down the missile tests as a significant step toward war.
"There's a lot of signaling going on, but I think everybody recognizes what the consequences of any kind of a conflict would be," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters at the Pentagon.
Gates, who has sought for months to ease concerns that a war with Iran was inevitable, said specifically that he believed that both Israel and Iran understood the consequences of such a conflict.
Asked if he thought the saber-rattling had moved the U.S. and Iran any closer to war, Gates replied: "No, I don't think so."
Gates said he could not confirm Iran's claim that it had successfully tested the missiles to a distance of 1,250 miles.
Iranian officials insisted that they were prepared to retaliate if threatened or attacked.
"Our hands are always on the trigger, and our missiles are ready for launch," said Gen. Hossein Salami, air commander of the Revolutionary Guards, which conducted the tests, according to IRNA, the official Iranian news agency.
Nevertheless, the heated rhetoric and missile tests pushed crude oil prices upward by $1.44, to $137.48 per barrel.
Supertankers carry some 40 percent of the world's oil through the 35-mile-wide strait, which is heavily targeted by Iranian anti-ship missiles, according to U.S. officials. The region's land pipelines have insufficient capacity to maintain the flow of oil exports if the strait were to be closed.
Senior U.S. naval officers have acknowledged that Iran has the capability to temporarily close the strait with a combination of mines, its six submarines and anti-ship missiles. But U.S. air and naval forces in the region have planned and practiced operations for years to quickly reopen the waterway and have expressed confidence that they could do so.
