In later reporting it turns out that there’s an annoying jerk on that channel in the Persian Gulf area who breaks into communications all the time hurling insults at one and all. Mideast linguists are now saying the voice is not a Persian speaker based on the accent, and probably not on a ship, based on the lack of background noise. So you have some ship-watching on land seeing if he can start an international incident for his amusement.

It’s probably a friend of one of the rightwing nutters like Goldberg etc. They want a war with Iran so bad, it’s better than sex for them! (They can’t breed can they? What a horrifying thought!)

If the USA ended up in a war with Iran, the rightwingnuts would have an Epiphany! Or at least, multiple orgasms (whilst hiding under the bed in their Mom’s basement).

thanks for that. i used to like that game, but i’ll never again be able to play it with quite the same enjoyment now.

We haven’t heard the entire tape, which might have included the reply – “Oh, yeah?!! Take THAT!”

Since the NIE the Iranian moderates have been able to complain about Ahmadinejad again and it doesn’t look good for his allies in parliament, because without an outside threat “it’s the economy, stupid”, and the Iranian economy has problems.

Iran is a bit like the force fields Frank Herbert described in Dune – if you press too hard and too quickly they become rigid, but with the proper technique you can penetrate them and affect change.

I’m glad the U.S. did not overreact this time, or if it did, at least it didn’t initiate hostilities. Jeez, why do we even have to worry about such things. If the Shrubbery didn’t issue ranting threats, and if his speech writers didn’t make up crap phrases like Axis of Evil, we wouldn’t necessarily have these problems. I am by no means forgiving Iran all the trouble it has made in the region over a couple of decades, but is it too much to ask that the U.S. get it right before it starts issuing accusations and threats?