WASHINGTON, May 24: Iran fired a medium-range Shahab-3 missile on Tuesday night in a test, a US defence official said on Wednesday. “Iran fired a Shahab-3 on Tuesday,” said the official.

“It can always help Iran increase its confidence in the program,” said a second defence official.

The Shahab-3, which is modelled on the North Korean No-Dong missile, has a reported range of some 1,300kms, putting Israel, Afghanistan and US military installations in the region within reach.

Iran is reported to be working on extending the missile’s range. An Iranian general in January said that the Shahab-3 was capable of striking targets 2,000kms away.

“I think they will have high confidence that the missile will work by the time they have atomic bombs to put on it,” said John Pike, executive director of GlobalSecurity.Org.

“They have been developing it in cahoots with Pakistan and North Korea. And Pakistan has been testing it as well,” he said.

“It’s a general rule of thumb for an American missile program that you would like to have 20 tests before you had confidence in the fly-ability of the thing, and between Pakistan and Iran’s test I think they are pretty close to that.”—AFP