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.

British officials believe all five Britons kidnapped in Iraq almost two years ago are alive, despite claims by the hostage takers last year that one of them had taken his own life.
The revelation comes after the British embassy in Baghdad received a tape of one of the hostages, the first such video in eight months. The tape was handed over to the Embassy by Iraqi security officials last week, and was purportedly filmed nine days ago. Embassy officials declined to reveal the identity of the hostage, while analysts try to …

An Internet security company claims that Iran has taken advantage of a computer security breach to obtain engineering and communications information about Marine One, President Barack Obama’s helicopter, according to a report by WPXI, NBC’s affiliate in Pittsburgh.
Tiversa, headquartered in Cranberry Township, Pa., reportedly discovered a security breach that led to the transfer of military information to an Iranian IP address, according to WPXI. The information is said to include planned engineering upgrades, avionic schematics, and computer network information.
Incoming search terms:obamas helicopterobama\s helicopterobama helicopter iraqsaudi choperhelicoptere marine onemarine one …

The nation’s top military officer said Sunday that Iran has enough nuclear material to make a bomb, but Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Tehran was not close to building a weapon.
Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN’s “State of the Union” program that he believed Iran had enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.
“We think they do, quite frankly,” Mullen said.
A recent report by the International Atomic Energy Agency found that Iran had built up its supplies of enriched uranium to slightly more …

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.

Iran will have enough enriched uranium to make a single nuclear weapon later this year, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) reported on Tuesday.
The think tank made the prediction in its ‘Military Balance 2009,’ an annual assessment of global defense and military developments.
Announcing the new report on Tuesday, Mark Fitzpatrick said the threat may not necessarily as big as it sounds.
“Being able to enrich uranium is not the same as having nuclear weapons,” he said.

Israeli airstrikes have targeted the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt, as part of Israel’s response to an attack on one of its frontier patrols on Tuesday.
Residents near the town of Rafah fled as missiles hit tunnels through which Israel says militants smuggle arms.
The strikes came ahead of US envoy George Mitchell’s visit to promote a permanent Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
Both sides declared ceasefires on 17 and 18 January to end Israel’s three-week offensive on Gaza.

Two renowned Iranian AIDS physicians were convicted for allegedly taking part in a U.S.-backed plot to topple Iran’s Islamic system, mystifying human rights activists who said the two were apolitical and doing innovative work on stemming the spread of the HIV virus.
Rights groups condemned the conviction and sentencing of the scientists, brothers Arash and Kamyar Alaei. It was the latest instance of the hard-line government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad targeting Iranians with Western connections and depicting them as tools for an American campaign to overthrow the Islamic republic.

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Now that there is a cease-fire in place, Israelis are asking whether the 22-day war against Hamas in Gaza achieved its aims.
The government argues that overwhelming victory in the field will advance what was Operation Cast Lead’s primary goal: bringing a long period of quiet to civilians in southern Israel, freeing them from the tyranny of cross-border rocket attacks from Gaza.

For the first time in three weeks a fragile peace prevailed in the shattered Gaza Strip yesterday, after Hamas responded to Israel’s unilateral ceasefire by announcing a week-long truce of its own.
The Palestinian group fired at least 15 rockets and mortars into southern Israel to show that it had not been crushed. It then gave Israel seven days to withdraw its forces and open Gaza’s border crossings to allow in desperately needed humanitarian aid.