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Jamejam Online/AFP/Getty ImagesThree missiles rise into the air as a forth remains in the launcher on the ground during a test-firing in an undisclosed location in the Iranian desert, July 9, 2008.DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -The BBC has raised the possibility that Iran may target NATO forces in Afghanistan, which include several thousand Canadian troops stationed in the province of Kandahar, with short-range missiles.
Those who focused on the possibility of Iran and Israel going to war or a strike against the U. S. Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf have overlooked the chance that attacking elsewhere might also serve Iran's strategic interests, the BBC said in an article on its Web site last week.
"People always look towards the west of Iran, but we need to look east as well," Christopher Pang, head of African and Middle Eastern research for the highly respected Royal United Services Institute, told the British network. "There are plenty of U. S. interests and international troops stationed in Afghanistan which can be targeted from the east of the country."
Worried by what Tehran describes as its power-generating civilian nuclear program, Israel has been considering if and when to try to destroy Iran's nuclear sites with air strikes and missiles launched from submarines. The Jewish state has also been improving its air defence system to protect itself against the latest variants of Iran's Shahab-3 ballistic missiles, which could reach Tel Aviv with a one-ton conventional payload between 11 and 14 minutes after being launched.
But Iran is thought to have far more short-range Shahab-2 and Zelzal missiles in its arsenal. Though neither rocket is considered very accurate, they have enough legs to hit about half of Afghanistan, including Kandahar.
(While unconnected with developments regarding Iran, Canadian commanders in southern Afghanistan would have noted with keen interest that U. S. Marines who were rushed to Kandahar this spring were told last week their tours there had been extended by one month into November).
Months before any likely conflict between Iran and Israel or Iran and the United States, a fog of war is descending on the region causing even greater anxiety about the rising price of oil.
Iran responded last week to a major Israeli long-range bombing exercise conducted in June by test firing what it claimed were new, longer-range models of the Shahab-3. But Agence France-Presse quickly discovered that Iranian photos of the Shahabs' launch had been doctored to obscure the fact that one of them had apparently misfired.
Hours before Tehran's botched war games began, USS Abraham Lincoln slipped through the Strait of Hormuz and into the Arabian Sea, ostensibly so that the aircraft carrier's warplanes could more easily bomb Taliban and al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan. But it was also true that the capital ship was safer from attack in the deeper waters off Iran's southern coast than in the narrow, shallow confines of the Persian Gulf.
Only a few days ago the U. S. Navy completed a five-day ballistic missile defence exercise in the Middle East designed to thwart a potential Shahab-3 attack, according to the Navy Times. Ships of the Fifth Fleet, which has its headquarters in Bahrain, have also begun exercises designed to prevent Iran from blocking the Strait of Hormuz -- the most vital link in the global energy supply system -- with sea mines and speedboat attacks.
Not to be outdone by Tehran's latest propaganda offensive, Israel, which possesses far more precise missiles than Iran does, publicly displayed for the first time last Thursday a new spy plane said to be capable of gathering sophisticated intelligence about Iran.
Some analysts have concluded that despite the White House labelling of Iran's missile tests as "a provocation," Tehran's sabre-rattling had failed to prove that its missile technology was improving. Other commentators guessed that the tests were part of a loud prelude to serious bargaining by Tehran in order to avert the imposition of ever more stringent international economic sanctions designed to try to force it to stop enriching uranium that could be used for either peaceful or military purposes.
Israel's Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, will be in Washington for three days this week to discuss Iran with senior officials such as Dick Cheney, the hawkish Vice-President. Mr. Barak's visit was to be followed a few days later by that of Israel's top general.
Although it has attracted little public notice yet, Ottawa, too, must be taking notice of the rising martial drumbeat and privately calculating what the risks of a war involving Iran might be for the Canadian battle group stationed less than 400 kilometres away from Tehran's eastern frontier.
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