| www.newsmax.com --------------- Iran has made dramatic progress in its ballistic missile programs over the past year, unveiling three new missiles it claims are already in production, including an innovative design that could be a "game-changer" if used against US aircraft carriers, an Israeli expert widely considered one of the world's top authorities on Iranian missile programs says. Also significant were three unannounced tests of longer-range missiles most experts believe were designed to carry a nuclear warhead. In the past, Iran has announced all of its missile tests, often with great fanfare, even when they were a failure, said Uzi Rubin, the father of Israel's "Arrow" anti-missile program. One of the unannounced missile tests involved a variant of the Shahab-3, which has been successfully test-fired many times since it was first flown in 1998 and is now in active deployment with Revolutionary Guards Air Force units. Because the missile has been tested successfully so many times, Rubin believes failure was not why the longer-range missile tests were kept quiet. "I believe it was policy," he told a breakfast meeting on Capitol Hill hosted by the National Defense University Foundation. The latest United Nations Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on Iran, which passed in June 2010, expressly forbids Iran from conducting tests of "nuclear-capable" missiles. "The fact that Iran did not disclose those tests is tantamount to admitting they were of nuclear ... |
