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.

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.
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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.

Binyamin Netanyahu described Iran as the greatest threat that Israel has ever faced and failed to mention stalled talks with the Palestinians after he was asked to be the country’s new Prime Minister today.
In a speech made outside the residence of President Shimon Peres, the Likud leader said that protecting Israel would be his greatest responsibility as leader, and condemned “formidable” challenges posed by the Islamic Republic.
However, he did not once mention the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process or a two-state solution throughout his address, omissions that will cause concern within …

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.

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.

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — A top Israeli envoy delivered his country’s stance on a cease-fire agreement in Gaza to Egyptian mediators trying to seal a truce on Thursday. The Iranian president said the fighting showed Israel’s continued existence in the region is “not feasible.”
The development came as the U.N. secretary-general pressed Israel and Gulf leaders gathered in Saudi Arabia to discuss the conflict.
The diplomatic push gained momentum despite competing agendas among Arab and Islamic governments, which are openly disagreeing about how to resolve — or even discuss — the conflict …

Iran’s top leader has issued a religious opinion, or fatwa, declaring the purchase of any Israeli goods or trade with Israeli companies to be forbidden.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme political and religious authority, is urging Muslims throughout the world to avoid the purchase of any products that would profit Israelis.
A fatwa is a religious opinion that Muslims only obey if they revere the person issuing it, which in the case of Khamenei would be restricted largely to Iranian Shi’ites.

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US President George W. Bush last year rejected a secret Israeli request for an air strike against the main Iranian nuclear complex using US bunker-busting bombs, The New York Times reported on its website.
But citing unnamed senior US and foreign officials, the newspaper said Bush had authorized a new covert operation aimed at sabotaging Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons.
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