Iran showed continued advancement in its missile development program by launching a 1,200-mile-range solid-fueled rocket, the International Herald Tribune reported.

That Sejil-2 missile has sufficient range to strike Israel, or U.S. bases in the region, or to reach parts of Europe. It also boasts greater accuracy and new sensors.

Israeli President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is running for reelection in Iran, has said Israel should be wiped from the map, and that Israel soon shall cease to exist. He also said he envisions a world without the United States.

That Iranian missile success comes after Iran earlier this year launched a satellite into orbit, using the same basic technology as an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. (Please see Space & Missile Defense Report, Feb. 9, 2009.) Some 30 minutes after that February launch, the satellite was over the United States.

The latest Iranian missile launch also was an impudent retort, after President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, both newly in office, said at the White House that Iranian moves to develop nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems cannot be countenanced, threatening to ignite a nuclear arms race across the Middle East.

Obama said options must remain on the table, presumably including U.S. or Israeli air strikes against illicit Iranian nuclear production sites. He also said disarmament talks with Iran must show major progress and be headed toward a positive conclusion by the end of the year, because he isn’t going to have talks just to talk, while Iran uses the time to build bombs.

But Obama at the same time is proposing only a weak $51 million for the planned European Missile Defense (EMD) system that the United States would build in the Czech Republic (radar) and Poland (interceptors in ground silos.) The EMD would be designed to demolish any missiles that Iran launches toward Europe, and also could be used to take down nuclear-tipped missiles launched from Pakistan, if the Taliban take over more areas of that nation and seize those missiles. (Please see Space & Missile Defense Report, Monday, May 18, 2009.)

Ahmadinejad said after the missile launch that it landed on target, but didn’t give the target location or description.

Cumulatively, the tests show that Iran has mastered both using solid-fuel rocketry (which means a missile may be prepared for launch much faster than a liquid-fueled missile) and also has mastered the art of multiple stages in a missile. Further, a solid-fuel missile can be mobile, moving away from the launch site swiftly after firing a rocket at U.S. or allied areas.

Separately, many military analysts say Iran has produced enough low-grade uranium that, with further processing into highly enriched uranium, it can build a nuclear weapon. By the end of the year, it will have sufficient fissile material to make several atomic bombs, experts say.

Iran claims that it is producing the nuclear material to fuel an electrical generating plant, despite the fact that Russia already offered to give Iran sufficient fuel for such a plant, and despite the fact that Iran possesses one of the largest proven petroleum reserves on the planet.

The Iranian launch drew condemnation from officials of both parties in Washington.