MOSCOW, July 11 (Xinhua) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that Iran's recent test fires showed it is unnecessary for the United States to deploy a missile defense shield in eastern Europe as Iran's missiles can not reach there.

    "The tests in Iran have only confirmed that Iran at the moment has missiles with a maximum range of 2,000 km. That confirms what we have said before," Lavrov said after a meeting with visiting Jordanian Foreign Minister Salaheddin al-Bashir.

    "That is the current idea of deploying a U.S. ... missile shield in Europe, with its parameters, is not needed to monitor and react to those missiles with this range," he added.

    Lavrov also told reporters that the Iranian nuclear dispute should be dealt with by political-diplomatic means rather than threats.

    Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps on Wednesday test-fired a Shahab 3 missile in military exercises dubbed Payambar-e Azam 3 (Great Prophet 3).

    The Shahab 3 ballistic missile was equipped with a one-ton conventional warhead and can hit targets within a range of 2,000 km.

    Meanwhile, on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Riceand her Czech counterpart Karel Schwarzenberg signed the main treaty on the stationing of a U.S. radar base on Czech soil.

    The United States plans to build a radar base in the Brdy military district, some 90 km southwest of the Czech capital Prague. The radar base, along with an interceptor missile base in neighboring Poland, are parts of a planned U.S. missile defense system in eastern European which the U.S. says is designed to target threats from countries like Iran.

    Russia is strongly opposed to the U.S. missile shield, saying the plan poses a threat to its strategic interests.