NY Times: Iran rehearsed attacking Haifa and Dimona
Classified report says Tehran used models of Israeli cities, 'NY Times' reports, accidentally shot at civilian airliners.
By JPOST.COM STAFFUranium-processing site in Isfahan 370(photo credit: Reuters)
The Iranian military is using firing ranges designed to resemble Haifa and Dimona to rehearse an air attack on Israel, The New York Times quoted classified Pentagon intelligence reports as saying on Wednesday.Following Israel’s reported attack on a Syrian nuclear reactor under construction in September 2007, and an IAF drill over the Mediterranean in June 2008, the Iranian Air Force started conducting “daily air-to-ground attack training at firing ranges resembling the Israeli city of Haifa and the Israeli nuclear facility at Dimona,” the classified report by the Defense Intelligence Agency noted.The Pentagon report also alleged that skittishness in Tehran over an Israeli airstrike on its nuclear facilities resulted in the Iranian military mistakenly firing on civilian airplanes and in one case on one of its own military warplanes in 2007 and 2008, the Times reported.“Iranian air defense units have taken inappropriate actions dozens of times, including firing anti-aircraft artillery and scrambling aircraft against unidentified or misidentified targets,” the report cited a heavily classified 2008 Pentagon intelligence report as stating.
