Iran boasts they've built stealth fighter - looks fake

Iran yesterday revealed its most recent indigenous fighter jet — the “Qaher 313″. The prototype Q-313 was presented to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as a ceremonial gift during the country's Ten-Day Dawn celebration. The festivities commemorate the 1979 revolution when the U.S. embassy in Tehran taken by force.

In the previous days, the Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi had said, “The aircraft will be different from the other fighter jets Iran has already made.”

Indeed, based on the first photographs released by the FARS News Agency, the new stealthy jet has a peculiar design. It features hard edges and those distinctive edges and angle of the U.S. F-22 and the twin tail shape much similar to that of the F-35 Lightning II.

The Q-313 has large, seemingly fixed canards, and little wings whose external section is canted downward, while the canopy material is at least odd (based on its transparency, it looks like Plexiglas or something like that).

The cockpit seems basic (a bit too much for a modern plane – note the lack of wiring behind the front panel).

The Defence Minister, Ahmad Vahidi, said: "Qaher is a fully indigenous aircraft designed and built by our aerospace experts.

"This is a radar-evading plane that can fly at low altitude, carry weapons, engage enemy aircrafts and land at short airstrips."

He said it was Iran's best stealth plane.

However, some reports suggest Iran's program relies on equipment supplied by major international defence contractors and that it incorporates parts made abroad or uses outside engineered technologies in its domestic designs.

Pictures of the Qaher released by the official IRNA news agency and pictures on state TV showed a single-seat jet. They described it as a fighter-bomber that can combat other aircraft and ground targets.

Suicide bomber attack on US (in Ankara, Turkey) embassy kills 2

A suicide bomber from a far-left group killed a Turkish security guard at the U.S. embassy in Ankara on Friday, blowing the door off a side entrance and sending smoke and debris flying into the street.

The attacker blew himself up inside U.S. property, Ankara Governor Alaaddin Yuksel said. The blast sent masonry spewing out of the wall and could be heard a mile away.

Interior Minister Muammer Guler said the bomber was a member of a far-left group. The U.S. State Department said it was working with Turkish police to investigate what it described as "a terrorist blast".

Islamist radicals, far-left groups, far-right groups and Kurdish separatist militants have all carried out attacks in Turkey in the past. There was no claim of responsibility.

"The suicide bomber was ripped apart and one or two citizens from the special security team passed away," said Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who was attending a ceremony in Istanbul when the blast happened.

"This event shows that we need to fight together everywhere in the world against these terrorist elements," he said.

Far-left groups in Turkey oppose what they see as U.S. influence over Turkish foreign policy.

Turkey is a key U.S. ally in the Middle East with common interests ranging from energy security to counter-terrorism, and has been one of the leading advocates of foreign intervention to end the conflict in neighboring Syria.

Around 400 U.S. soldiers have arrived in Turkey over the past few weeks to operate Patriot anti-missile batteries meant to defend against any spillover of Syria's civil war, part of a NATO deployment due to be fully operational in the coming days.

U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone emerged through the main gate of the embassy, which is surrounded by high walls, shortly after the explosion to address reporters, flanked by a security detail as a Turkish police helicopter hovered overhead.

"We are very sad of course that we lost one of our Turkish guards at the gate," Ricciardone said, thanking the Turkish authorities for a prompt response.

A Reuters witness saw one wounded person being lifted into an ambulance as police armed with assault rifles cordoned off the area.

"It was a huge explosion. I was sitting in my shop when it happened. I saw what looked like a body part on the ground," said travel agent Kamiyar Barnos, whose shop window was shattered around 100 meters away from the blast.

Missing F-16 pilot's body found in Adriatic

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — The body of an Air Force F-16 pilot who went missing during a night training flight late Monday was found Thursday off the coast of Italy, his family announced in a statement.

“It is with great sadness that we announce that the body of Captain Lucas Gruenther was found in the Adriatic Sea this afternoon,” the statement said.

Gruenther and his F-16 Fighting Falcon went missing at about 8 p.m. Monday roughly 150 miles south of Aviano Air Base, where his unit, the 31st Fighter Wing, is based.

A massive search effort ensued, including Italian coast guard and navy ships, fishing vessels and an assortment of planes, including other F-16s from the wing.

In their statement, the family gave thanks for the outpouring of support it received over the nearly four days since Gruenther went missing.

“We especially want to extend our deepest gratitude to the many people who volunteered their time and resources to help bring Luc home,” the statement said.

Israel pounds suspected chemical warfare convoy in Syria

JERUSALEM — The Syrian government said that Israeli warplanes had carried out an airstrike inside its territory on Wednesday, raising the risks that the two-year-old civil conflict in Syria could spread beyond the country’s borders.

A statement by the Syrian military said a scientific research facility in the Damascus suburbs had been hit, but the precise target was unclear. Earlier news reports, confirmed by an American official in Washington, said the Israelis were targeting a truck convoy inside Syria that was bound for Lebanon.

It was the first time in more than five years that Israel’s air force had attacked a target in Syria, which has remained in a technical state of war with Israel although both sides have maintained an uneasy peace along their disputed border.

The Syrian statement, carried by state television, said an unidentified number of Israeli jets flying below radar had hit the research facility, killing two people and causing “huge material damage.”

The Syrian statement denied the reports that Israeli warplanes had struck a truck convoy carrying antiaircraft weapons destined for Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group, which is allied with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and considers Israel its main enemy.

“Israeli warplanes violated our airspace at dawn, bombing directly one of the research scientific centers in the Jimraya district in rural Damascus,” the Syrian statement said, calling it a “breach of Syrian sovereignty.”

Israel officials declined to comment on any military action that Israel might have conducted in Syria.

But the Israelis have warned in recent days about what they called the threat of chemical or advanced conventional weapons leaking from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon or into the hands of extremist Islamic rebel groups as a result of the turmoil in Syria.

The Lebanese Army said in a statement on Wednesday that Israeli warplanes had carried out two sorties, circling over Lebanon for hours on Tuesday and before dawn on Wednesday, but made no mention of any attacks.

Jerusalem has long maintained a policy of silence on pre-emptive military strikes. It would not comment after Sudan accused the Israel military of carrying out an air attack that destroyed a weapons factory in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, in October. Israel also never admitted to the bombing of a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, and Syria kept mum about that attack. The ambiguity allowed that event to pass without Syria feeling pressure to retaliate.

The heightened sense of alert in Israel this week had focused on the Syrian government’s precarious hold on its stockpiles of chemical weapons. But Israeli officials and experts have also voiced concern about the fate of what they describe as conventional “strategic weapons” in Syria, including advanced ground-to-air missiles, shore-to-sea missiles and anti-tank missiles. They say such weapons in the hands of Hezbollah, which Israel last fought in a monthlong war in 2006, could upset the current balance of forces in the region.

Amnon Sofrin, a retired brigadier general and former Israeli intelligence officer, told reporters in Jerusalem on Wednesday that Hezbollah, which is known to have been storing some of its more advanced weapons in Syria, was now eager to remove everything it could to Lebanon. He said Israel was carefully watching for convoys transferring weapons systems from Syria to Lebanon.

Israel’s air force chief, Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel, said on Tuesday that Syria was a prime example of “the weakening governance in neighboring countries that heralds greater exposure to hostile activity.”

Speaking at an international space conference in Israel, General Eshel said: “We work every day in order to lessen the immediate threats, to create better conditions so that we will be victorious in future wars. This is a struggle in which the Air Force is a central player, from here to thousands of kilometers away.”

There have been reports in the last week of feverish security consultations between Israel’s political and security chiefs, and at least one Iron Dome anti-rocket missile defense battery was deployed in northern Israel. Israel’s national security adviser, Yaakov Amidror, was in Moscow for talks with Russian officials on Monday.

Israel has made it clear that if the Syrian government loses control over its chemical weapons or transfers them to Hezbollah, Israel will most likely be compelled to act. Avi Dichter, the minister for the home front, told Israel Radio on Tuesday that options to prevent Syria from using or transferring the weapons included deterrence and “attempts to hit the stockpiles.”


Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad in Beirut, Lebanon, and Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt in Washington.

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