Israeli Official: Iran Tried to Build a Missile to Hit the U.S.

If what an Israeli minister said Thursday is true, Iran came close to developing a missile that could hit the United States before the facility developing it got destroyed in an explosion last November.

If what an Israeli minister said Thursday is true, Iran came close to developing a missile that could hit the United States before the facility developing it got destroyed in an explosion last November. Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon said the site was “getting ready to produce a missile with a range of 10,000 kilometer," The New York Times reports. "That's the Great Satan, not us."

It's an alarming claim: The recent hostility between Iran and the United States has been fairly open and raw, and if Iran's edging toward nuclear weapons, as the U.S. insists, that could mean a direct nuclear threat to the States.

But Israel's going to need secondary sourcing on this one, as its motives in building up the Iranian threat to the United States are pretty transparent. As Reuters points out, Iran already has missiles that can hit Israel, analysts think, and "Israeli leaders are keen to persuade any allies who do not share their assessment of the risk posed by Iran that a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic would also threaten the West."