Israel’s air force on Thursday wrapped up a large-scale four-day exercise which simulated its ability to defend against missile and jet strikes from Syria and Iran, a military official said.
The exercise was aimed at testing the air force’s ability to counter rocket and missile attacks from the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria and archfoe Iran, as well as the infiltration of jets overland, the official told AFP.
This is the first time the Israeli army has simulated strikes from the Islamic republic, located more than 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) away, he said.

Iranian and Russian engineers carried out a test-run of Iran’s first nuclear power plant Wednesday, a major step toward starting up a facility that the U.S. once hoped to prevent because of fears over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
Washington worried Iran would turn spent fuel from the plant’s reactor into plutonium, which could then be used to build a nuclear warhead, and U.S. officials pressured Moscow for years to stop helping Iran build the electricity-generating facility.

UNITED NATIONS, (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the world’s nuclear powers on Friday to take steps to abolish their atomic arsenals and outlined a set of proposals for eliminating all weapons of mass destruction.
The permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China — signed the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, under which they pledged to negotiate steps on scrapping their nuclear weapons.