600 Iranian missiles pointed at Israel

Six hundred Iranian Shihab-3 missiles are pointed at targets throughout Israel, and will be launched if either Iran or Syria are attacked, an Iranian website affiliated with the regime reported on Monday.

Behind a poster of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reading: "Missile maneuver of the Great Prophet," Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards tests the long-range Shihab-3 missile in a central desert area of Iran.

"Iran will shoot at Israel 600 missiles if it is attacked," the Iranian news website, Assar Iran, reported. "600 missiles will only be the first reaction."

According to the report, dozens of locations throughout Iraq, which are being used by the US Army, have also been targeted.

The Shihab missile has a range of 1,300 km, and can reach anywhere in Israel.

On Sunday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that the nuclear Iranian crisis forces the world "to prepare for the worst," and said that in this case it "is war."

Kouchner emphasized, however, that negotiations should still be the preferred course of action.

Kouchner, quoted by French daily Le Figaro, added that "Iran does whatever it pleases in Iraq ... one cannot find in the entire world a crisis greater than this one."

In response to Kouchner's comments, Iran's state-owned news agency accused France of pandering to the interests of the United States.

"The new occupants of the Elysee (Presidential palace) want to copy the White House," the IRNA news agency said in an editorial. The editorial added that French President Nicolas Sarkozy was taking on "an American skin."

Kouchner's statements came just hours after US Defense Secretary Robert Gates reiterated the Bush administration's commitment, at least for the time being, to using diplomatic and economic means to counter the potential nuclear threat from Iran.

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