First up, we’ve got this craptastic news from the Jerusalem Post. Turns out Iran tested a new long-range missile, actually an improvement from the Shihab-3 missile, which uses solid fuel instead of the original liquid fuel. What does that mean? A faster launch sequence and more difficult to detect.

The missile has a range of 2,000 kilometers, and is capable of reaching Israel, US Army bases in the Middle East and eastern European cities, including Moscow…

According to the country’s IRNA news agency, Najjar said the missile was named the “Ashoura,” meaning “the tenth day” in Farsi – a sacred reference among Shi’ite Muslims to the martyrdom of the third imam.

Analysts believe Iran is developing a Shihab-4 missile, which would have a range of 3-4,000 km. That’d be enough to hit Europe, too.

Unfortunately, the CIA isn’t on the same page on the threat as French President Nicolas Sarkozy is.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned of a risk of a war with Iran if Israel considered its security seriously threatened by Tehran’s nuclear drive in a magazine interview to be published Thursday.

Sarkozy also said he was ready to travel to Tehran to discuss a civilian nuclear partnership if the country steps up its cooperation with the UN atomic watchdog.

“The problem for us is not so much the risk that the Americans launch a military intervention, but that the Israelis consider their security to be truly threatened,” Sarkozy told Le Nouvel Observateur.

“Everyone agrees on the fact that what the Iranians are doing has no civilian explanation,” Sarkozy said, referring to Tehran’s uranium enrichment work. “The only debate is about whether they will develop a military capacity in one or five years.”

Indeed, read this piece from The New York Times. In particular, this part:

During the past year, a period when Iran’s weapons program was supposedly halted, the government has been busy installing some 3,000 gas centrifuges at its plant at Natanz. These machines could, if operated continuously for about a year, create enough enriched uranium to provide fuel for a bomb. In addition, they have no plausible purpose in Iran’s civilian nuclear effort. All of Iran’s needs for enriched uranium for its energy programs are covered by a contract with Russia.

Emphasis mine. Iran continues to defy demands from the international community, not just the U.S. and Israel, that it halt its enrichment of uranium. Even the NIE concludes that Iran’s nuclear weapons program halted in 2003. Now whether it did or it didn’t (and some conclude it didn’t) what that says it that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, but is just temporarily suspended.

Sarkozy has said a new UN resolution boosting sanctions against Iran is still justified despite the US report.

But he also insisted in the interview that “the Americans are not, in this case, warmongers.”

The United States, Britain, Germany, France, Russia and China had been working on a new UN Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran’s enrichment programme when the US report was released.

Exit question: Since when did France get tougher on Iran than many Americans?