Iran missile test follows sanctions talk from West

France said the test sent a “very bad signal” from Iran; Germany called it an “alarming” development that would not build trust. Both countries are pushing for heavier sanctions against Iran.

“Those missiles don’t reach the United States, they reach Europe,” says Mr. Sadjadpour. “If Iran were smart, they would try to create divisions within the international community, rather than uniting nations against it.”

The launch came a day after the US House of Representatives voted 412-12 on Tuesday to give President Barack Obama the power to block companies from providing Iran with critical refined petroleum products, and from improving Iran’s ability to produce its own.

The measure has yet to pass the Senate, but adds up to what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned months ago could be “crippling sanctions” against Iran if it did not comply with UN Security Council resolutions to freeze its nuclear programs.

Iran insists its nuclear efforts are solely to make nuclear power; many Western capitals believe that Iran’s civilian program masks an intention to build a nuclear bomb. Doubts about Iran’s intentions rose further on fresh reports in recent days – and so far unverified in public by the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency – that Iranian scientists have been secretly working since 2007 on a triggering mechanism that could only suit a nuclear device.

Iranian officials said any new sanctions would have little impact. “They cannot succeed,” Hojjatollah Ghanimifard, a senior official of the state National Iranian Oil Company, told Reuters. “We have a long list of suppliers of gasoline.”

Though Iran is the fifth-largest oil exporter and earned billions in surplus cash during the boom in oil prices in recent years, little was reinvested to expand Iran’s small refining capacity. Iran imports as much as 40 percent of the gasoline it uses

Iran is still deadlocked over a nuclear swap deal offered by the world powers and accepted by Iran last October, that would have resulted in the bulk of Iran’s low-enriched uranium being moved out of the country in exchange for fuel for a research reactor.

Iran has sent back mixed messages, but this week – even as exasperation grew in Washington and the push for new sanctions began anew – senior Iranian officials said they are willing to do the swap, but on altered terms.

Yet more contentious issues include the sentencing of an Iranian citizen by a US federal judge to five years in prison. Amir Hossein Ardebili was an Iranian procurement official lured out of Iran to Georgia by US agents in a 2007 sting operation, then secretly extradited to the US where he has been held ever since.

On the Iranian side, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Monday that three Americans who crossed into northern Iran from Iraq last July had “suspicious” motives, and so would be tried in court. The families of the three say they were on a holiday and accidentally strayed across the border into Iran while hiking.

Besides those three, US officials have also pressed Iran to release dual US-Iranian citizen Kian Tajbakhsh, an academic and urban planner sentenced to at least 12 years in prison after the June 2009 post-election unrest in Iran.

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