IRANS recent string of military tests, that include a surface-to-surface missile, a drone hitting targets as far away as 1000 km, followed by a high speed missile launching assault boat, are an expected response to Western sabre-rattling. Concurrently, President Mahmoud Ahmedinejads offer of friendship to the US, made at the drone induction ceremony, shows that the country desires to pursue the policy of live and let live and that its military muscle is only meant as a precautionary measure against foreign aggression. Keeping in view the hegemonistic designs of not just the US, but a hostile West and a thuggish Israel, Iran has every right to make preparations for self-defence. And this need for self-defence gets all the more urgent at a time when the US is unleashing the fury of its military power on Muslim lands with impunity, throwing Afghanistan into a state of total chaos, leaving a trail of destruction in Iraq and bombing Pakistans tribal areas with drones, killing countless innocent civilians. The US has been all along eyeing Iran as a soft target; however, it was the latters state of preparedness to confront a military threat which has had a deterrent effect on the war plans of the former. Iran had also earlier this month finally been able to launch its Bushehr nuclear power plant intended for peaceful purposes. We have seen the kind of brazen pressure tactics including harsh sanctions that have been slapped on Tehran for its peaceful nuclear programme even while it was well within its right under the NPT to develop this. As if all this was not enough, the US went a step further with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm Mike Mullen making threatening remarks that the US plans to attack Iran. This was followed by former US envoy to the UN ,John Boltons statements encouraging Israel into launching an aerial attack on the Bushehr nuclear facility. Under the circumstances, Iran cannot be blamed for equipping its military with modern weapons.