US News

Iran’s warning shot

Iran boasted that it successfully test-fired at least two short-range missiles yesterday — in a defiant show of force after Washington and its allies warned Tehran over a newly revealed nuclear facility.

The official English-language Press TV showed pictures of at least two missiles being fired at the same time from a site in a central Iran desert. Men could be heard shouting, “Allahu akbar!” — God is great — as the missiles rose into the sky.

Gen. Hossein Salami, head of the Revolutionary Guard Air Force, which carried out the exercise, said the missiles hit their targets.

Salami said Iran also tested a multiple missile launcher.

“We are going to respond to any military action in a crushing manner, and it doesn’t make any difference which country or regime has launched the aggression,” he declared.

The tests came two days after the US and its allies disclosed evidence that Iran had been secretly developing an underground uranium-enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom.

The missiles tested yesterday can’t carry a nuclear warhead. But the timing of the tests was seen as a show of force in the face of criticism over the secret facility.

Tehran carried out the tests now “to show some muscle, show some strength, and say the game is not over for Iran yet,” said Alex Vatanka, a senior Middle East analyst at IHS Jane’s Defense Information Group.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, noting that Iran will meet with the US and other world powers in Geneva on Thursday, said she doesn’t believe the Tehran government can convince the nations its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

This will put Iran on a course for tougher economic penalties beyond the current “leaky sanctions,” she said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

The Iranians must “present convincing evidence as to the purpose of their nuclear program. We don’t believe that they can present convincing evidence that it’s only for peaceful purposes, but we are going to put them to the test,” she said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said pressuring Tehran economically and diplomatically would have a better chance of changing government policies than military strikes against the nuclear site.

“The reality is, there is no military option that does anything more than buy time,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, talked by phone with American lawmakers and urged the US to take action over the newly revealed facility, an official in his office said.

“If not now, then when?” the official quoted Netanyahu as saying.

andy.geller@nypost.com