The Pentagon is building a missile-defense radar station at a secret site in Qatar and organizing its biggest-ever minesweeping exercises in the Persian Gulf, as preparations accelerate for a possible flare-up with Iran, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, July 17. The radar site will complete the backbone of a system designed to defend U.S. interests and allies such as Israel and European nations against Iranian rockets. The minesweeping exercises, in September, will be the first such multilateral drills in the region. The U.S. moves are intended to address the two Iranian offensive capabilities Pentagon planners most worry about: Tehran’s arsenal of ballistic missiles and its threat to shut down the oil-shipping lanes of the Strait of Hormuz by mining them.