Ahmadinejad: War games ordinary

Iranian war games being staged at a time of heightened tension with the US are routine, the Iranian president told reporters during a state visit to Zimbabwe. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was speaking at a news conference late Thursday, hours after his elite Revolutionary Guard began maneuvers in the strategic Persian Gulf oil route, the Hormuz Strait.

In the past four years, the maneuvers have always been held in summer. There was no official explanation of why they were brought forward this year, but they came as Iranian leaders were depicting US President Barack Obama's new nuclear policy as a threat. "We are having programs in our home country and the West are not comfortable with that," Ahmadinejad said in Harare. "They don't understand why we are doing so. But it is just an ordinary military exercise that we are currently undertaking." (AP)