Moshe Yaalon, a deputy prime minister, warned that Iran was developing a missile with a range of about 6,000 miles that could hit the United States.
The second is developing a missile capable of reaching Israel and parts of Western Europe, and now the country has several likely candidates.
In 2007 America concluded, controversially, that Iran had been developing a nuclear warhead for a missile, but had stopped in 2003.
The agency has been developing a layered system of defenses against missile attacks on American troops overseas, on allied countries and on the United States.
The Pentagon's priorities that summer were developing a national missile defense plan and conducting a broad strategy and budget review.
China is developing a similar missile but officials in Beijing fear that the Chinese nuclear arsenal is so small it could be almost completely wiped out without notice, with the few missiles launched in reprisal being destroyed in mid-air by US missile defences.
It is developing a ballistic missile defence shield and, in collaboration with Russia, a fifth-generation fighter jet.
It is developing a "carrier killer" missile and acquiring a fleet of amphibious landing ships.
Israel is developing a medium-range missile defense system, called David's Sling, which was tested in computer simulations during the recent American-Israeli exercise, and has fielded a long-range system called Arrow.
A1 Iran is developing a longer-range missile than it has publicly acknowledged, with the capacity to strike targets as far away as Berlin, an opposition group plans to assert.
