So they're aggressively going after Iranian "networks" in Iraq, but swear that they don't intend to go into Iran. I'll take that.

They were aggressively going after Iranian networks by overflying Iran looking for radars. Also, they were aggressively going after Al Queda operatives in Iraq by inserting Special Forces teams into Iran starting about two years ago. Guess the GPS was off or something.

Nelson: 'HA HA'

Is that really how they think?

Yes.

Even when totally rational and reasonable motives are staring them in the face (eg, don't let a hostile superpower establish a base of operations next door), they think that this is something personal about teaching lessons?

Um, YES. They're little puffed up 'men' with tiny little dicks. Also, they're like metrosexual and stuff so they're thenthitive and take Iranian any nation's slights very very personally.

m, you vetoed my resolution you bitch!

I think your point is a good one, in so far as you make the case for an important rationale for Iranian interference that is being eclipsed. However, the rationale mentioned in the Times is also sorta reasonable, if you filter it: "teach us a lesson"means embarrassing us, and as Iran is engaged in a propoganda war of sorts with the US, it is in their interest to embarass us.

"Teach a lesson" would probably be called "Demonstrating a capacity for non-conventional deterrence" at the State Dept. If that's what they're doing (managed chaos) it's probably no more or less personal than the US sending the "Great White Fleet" around the world in 1907 or staging big war games near some country we want to scare. There's no deterrent effect in a truly secret weapon.

The Yorkshire Ranter is good on Iran. He thinks military intervention is unlikely and that there is no evidence of a military build up.

In summary, the strategic situation is this: Iran controls the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf, through which most of the region's petrochemical exports are transported by ship. Iran has had plenty of time (i.e. twenty years) to emplace a significant number of Exocet-type anti-shipping missiles along that coast. These could be used against either civilian or military vessels (viz. Hezbollah's recent successful attack on an Israeli naval corvette). Neutralising Iran's anti-shipping capability will take time and will cost.

So a reasonable view is that the cards are such that the realists trump the hawks and will continue to do so, no matter how heated the rhetoric. To which I can say nothing except that mad things happen sometimes. Some sort of Eldorado Canyon effort, perhaps.

Thanks, Charlie, that's helpful. Any idea how mobile Exocet missile batteries are, and how vulnerable to attack from the air?

So a reasonable view is that the cards are such that the realists trump the hawks and will continue to do so, no matter how heated the rhetoric.

And that of course if the rub. The guy is charge is a nut who thinks reality can be bent by force of will.

Ogged, I don't know. This is the missile in question. The Iranians have bought some from the Chinese and are also said to be able to make copies. They are almost certainly containerised and mounted in multiples of 4 on trucks or small boats. Some sort of sensor integration might be needed (to give the missiles a target) and the sensors might be separate. There's around 500-600 miles of coastline to hide them along, but the pinch point is Hormuz.

There's a US congressional statement here. The information is a bit out of date. It would make sense for the Iranians to have been punching these things out at the fastest possible rate over the last few years.

I'll take that.

I'm still not sure if you intend this ironically or not. I endorse the meaning of the non-ironic reading, insofar as it looks perfectly reasonable to "go after" Iranian operatives in Iraq. I also think biohazard is right about "teaching a lesson" meaning something like "demonstrate the unexpectedly high cost of regime change, i.e., the sort Bush obviously wants in Iran." In other words, what you said in parentheses.

The funny thing about Iran is that people insist on talking about it as a nonrational agent even when so many of its actions are explicable in rational terms.

Duh. Mexicans aren't rational.

Also, they're like metrosexual and stuff so they're thenthitive and take Iranian any nation's slights very very personally.

Unnecessary, lame, and an insult to the effete everywhere.

But speaking of people who are whack, I wanted to link to this before LB posted on it:

Official Attacks Top Law Firms Over Detainees

Disgusting. I hope Charles D. Stimson gets fired, demoted, sent to the brig, or whatever happens to deputy assistant secretaries of defense when they prove themselves to be completely unsuitable for their job.

From the Yorkshire Ranter, helpfully linked by Charlie upthread, comes this quote:

It looks like two US battalions are being withdrawn from Afghanistan for...guess what? The Surge. They should be gone just in time for the spring campaigning season, when the Taliban have been boasting of a drive against the Kabul-Kandahar road.

That whole "second time as farce" thing was overly optimistic. I fear it's tragedy all the way down.

I hope Charles D. Stimson gets fired, demoted, sent to the brig

Not likely.

Exocet: highly mobile. The Argentines stuck one of the naval-type ones on the back of a truck during the Falklands, essentially with a screwdriver, and hit HMS Glamorgan. But less capable.

The Silkworm/Seersucker types are much bigger (not to mention newer and deadlier), as are the Russian "Sunburn" ones Iran may or may not have. This reduces mobility, but they are all more or less mobile - designed to be mounted on a truck or a fast patrol craft.

That could get interesting.

The Turks have a POV to yours, Ogged, I'm sure you know.

"That could get interesting."

I'm not quite clear what the question or implications people are making re Iranian anti-ship missiles (sez the guy who was playing Harpoon and wargaming the possibilities back in the Eighties): yeah, Iranian shore-based anti-ship missiles are/can be a huge threat to shipping in the Gulf. Yeah, the U.S. could take most all of them out if we were starting war type stuff. Of course, then we'd been in a significant war.

I mean, that's the ultra-short version of the situation: it's not a particularly subtle one, nor, so far as I know, one requiring military sophistication to understand, overall.

How the war would go from that point, I wouldn't care to specifically predict; but that seems beyond the range of questions about the Silkworms and C-802s, etc., which is why I don't quite understand the implications of "that could get interesting."