TEHRAN, 10 November 2004 — Iran is capable of mass-producing the Shahab-3, a ballistic missile capable of hitting Israel, Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said yesterday. “We are presently able to mass-produce the Shahab-3, just like we do with the Paykan,” the minister was quoted as saying by the student news agency ISNA. The Paykan is Iran’s ubiquitous national car, mass-produced here for decades.

“We have mastered the technology and we have no limits on the volume of the production,” Shamkhani was also quoted as saying by state television. “My task consists of developing defense capabilities, and we have passed our objectives,” the rear admiral added.

Iran has recently upgraded the Shahab-3 ballistic missile, and says it now has a range of at least 2,000 kilometers (about 1,200 miles). Previous figures had put the missile’s range at between 1,300 and 1,700 kilometers, already bringing archenemy Israel and US bases in the region well within range.

Steady progress made by Iran on its ballistic missile program is a cause for concern for the international community, already alarmed over the country’s nuclear activities.

Meanwhile, the United States is skeptical about the EU’s efforts to cut a deal with Iran to get it to give up uranium enrichment that could be used to make nuclear weapons, a senior US official said in Vienna.

Assistant Secretary of State for arms control Stephen Rademaker said the United States is “very skeptical of Iran’s good faith in these negotiations.”

He told journalists on the sidelines of a meeting in Vienna of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that the United States has “told our European allies that we will not stand in the way of their effort to come to some diplomatic understanding with Iran.”

But he said: “We do not expect Iran to comply over the long-term with any commitment not to develop nuclear weapons.”

Rademaker said Iran was “more like North Korea,” which has pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and says it has nuclear weapons than Libya, which has abandoned a secret nuclear program and submitted to full verification from the IAEA.

“I think the question we should all ask looking at Iran today is Iran more like North Korea or like Libya. I think it is quite obvious that Iran is a lot more like North Korea than it is like Libya,” Rademaker said.

“We have made clear that our view is that Iran is seriously embarked on an effort to develop nuclear weapons in violation of Iran’s obligations as a non-nuclear weapons state under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,” Rademaker said.

An Iranian negotiator, Hossein Moussavian, said Sunday that Iran and the European Union have reached a “preliminary agreement” on easing concerns over the Islamic republic’s nuclear program following two days of crucial negotiations in Paris.

The accord is centered on demands that Iran maintain and widen a suspension of its sensitive uranium enrichment activities or else risk being referred by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.