Iran shows off missiles as Pentagon attacks failures

Mr Ahmadinejad used Iran's annual army day parade to show off missiles capable of hitting US and Israeli targets throughout the Middle East and to demand a US military withdrawal from the region.

As he did so, two senior White House officials issued toughly worded responses to the disclosure that Robert Gates, the Defence Secretary, had written a top-secret assessment of weaknesses in the Administration's plans for what to do if Iran failed to halt its nuclear weapons programme.

The war of words in Washington may reflect a power struggle between an Administration still committed to a diplomatic approach to Iran and an increasingly impatient Pentagon.

In a warning to anyone planning a strike on Iranian nuclear targets, Mr Ahmadinejad told Iranians in a televised speech that their country was so strong "that no enemy will harbour evil thoughts about laying its hands on Iranian territory". He said of US forces stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf: "They have to leave our region. This is not a request. It is an order from the nations of the region."

Such rhetoric is not new but it reflects the worrying reality for Washington that Iran is more concerned about military encirclement by the US than by President Obama's so-far fruitless diplomatic efforts to persuade it to end its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The White House hoped that its revelation of a secret nuclear fuel enrichment site near Qom, northwestern Iran, last September would produce concessions from Tehran and the international resolve necessary for new sanctions against the business interests of the Republican Guard. Instead, talks on a deal to export the country's low-enriched uranium in return for foreign assistance on a civilian nuclear power programme went nowhere, and Russia and China continued to resist sanctions in the UN Security Council.

Against this background Mr Gates wrote a memo described by those who have seen it as a "wake-up call" to General James Jones, Mr Obama's National Security Adviser. It warned that the Administration had no effective plans to deal with Iran should it assemble the components of a nuclear weapon but stop short of building one. Mr Gates also noted that detecting a shift from such a "virtual" nuclear capability to fully armed status would be almost impossible; and that no coherent strategy was in place to face down Tehran once such a shift was made.

The memo was written in January but its existence was a secret until it was disclosed by The New York Times at the weekend. Ben Rhodes, a White House spokesman, said that it was "absolutely false" that the document had forced the Administration to reassess its options on Iran, while General Jones told the newspaper: "The fact that we don't announce publicly our entire strategy doesn't mean we don't have a strategy that anticipates the full range of contingencies - we do."

Since January, Mr Obama has claimed substantial progress in persuading Russia and China to endorse a fourth round of UN sanctions, predicting last month that an agreement would be reached within weeks.

Even so, China has continued to argue publicly for alternatives to any course that would punish ordinary Iranians and to raise objections in private to the details of Mr Obama's plan. Experts also note that the sanctions under discussion do not include an embargo on exports to Iran of refined petroleum products - widely seen as the only method short of military strikes that would force the regime to back down.

It was unclear yesterday who was behind the leak of the Gates memo but the vehemence of the White House response suggests that senior Pentagon figures may be responsible. A similar pattern shadowed Mr Obama's drawn-out decision to deploy 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan last year. According to one report the Pentagon is moving hundreds of bunker-buster bombs to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, from where they could be dropped on Iranian targets. The latest version of the weapon, known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, is said to weigh 15 tonnes and be capable of burrowing through 200ft of reinforced concrete before exploding.