Doubts over Iran's saber-rattling

Is Iran playing chicken with the West? It's possible. Having betted that Russia and China would solidly back them at the UN and then coming up short (how short remains to be seen) it appears the mullahs new strategy is to not so subtly threaten American oil tankers in the Gulf with fancy new weapons. They've tried this tact before, as did Hussein and most recently, Hugo Chavez. All the crazy dictators have at one time or another threatened the US with their own military "prowess" in the hopes that we'd be too scared to invade them. What many people from foreign lands seem to misunderstand about is that no matter what the threat may be, if we decide to blow you up, nothing is going to stop us but our own will to keep Armageddon at bay.

Iran can have all the war games it wants, at the end of the day if the Israelis and/or we decide to start bombing Iranian nuclear plants, all the flying boats in the world won't stop us.

To be clear, JFK nearly went to nuclear war over the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Soviet Union at the time was a REAL nuclear threat. The only reason we haven't bombed N. Korea off the map yet is one, because of China's nuclear arsenal (courtesy of the Clinton Administration) and two, because we haven't found a way to do it yet without losing S. Korea. If we know that Russia and/or China won't retaliate then Iran hasn't got a prayer, should we decide that bomb diplomacy is the only language the mullahs understand.

On a side note, Secretary Rumsfeld, if you are listening, please, for the love of God, SECURE IRAQS BORDERS BEFORE BOMBING IRAN. Maybe it's just me but I'd like not to have a repeat of the Iraq war where you underestimate the locals and we end up being stuck waiting for the local dissidents to grow up and learn how to take care of country while foriegn insurgents terrorists kill our troops. I'm just saying is all.

Iran has unveiled with great fanfare a series of what it portrays as sophisticated, homegrown weapons — flying boats and missiles invisible to radar, torpedoes too fast to elude.

But experts said Tuesday it appears much of the technology came from Russia and questioned Iran's claims about the weapons' capabilities.

Still, the armaments, tested during war games by some 17,000 Revolutionary Guards in the Persian Gulf, send what may be Iran's real message: its increased ability to hit oil tankers if tension with America turns to outright confrontation.

To underline that message, the maneuvers — code-named "The Great Prophet" — have been held since Friday around the Strait of Hormuz, the 34-mile-wide entrance to the Gulf through which about two-fifths of the world's oil supplies pass.

The head of the Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, proclaimed Tuesday that Iran was now able to defend itself against "any extra-regional invasion."

It was a clear reference to Iranian worries of potential U.S. military action to stop its nuclear program, which the U.S. claims is intended to produce nuclear weapons. Iran says it aims only to generate electricity but has so far defied U.N. Security Council demands that it give up key parts of its program.

The new weapons, many of them shown on Iranian state TV during their tests, have come with impressive claims:

• A missile, the Fajr-3, that is invisible to radar and able to strike several targets with multiple warheads.

• A high-speed torpedo, the Hoot, able to move at some 223 mph, up to four times faster than a normal torpedo, and fired by ships cloaked to radar.

• A surface-to-sea missile, the Kowsar, with remote-control and searching systems that cannot be scrambled.

• A "super-modern flying boat," undetectable by radar and able to launch missiles with precise targeting while skimming low over the surface of the water at a top speed of 100 nautical mph.
In Washington, D.C., Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said "the Iranians have been known to boast and exaggerate" their weapons capabilities.

And some experts cast doubt on just how radar-evading Iran's ships and missiles are.

Others questioned if Iran developed the weapons on its own.

The Hoot torpedo — the name means "whale" — closely resembles the Russian-made VA-111 Shkval, the world's fastest known underwater missile, developed in 1995, said Ruslan Pukhov of Moscow's Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.

Pukhov noted the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan once had a Soviet torpedo-testing center on the remote mountain lake of Issyk-Kul. And he said that in the turmoil that followed the Soviet breakup, Kyrgyz authorities sold Shkvals to the Chinese, a major importer of Iranian oil.

Whatever the Iranian armaments' capabilities — or origins — they're unlikely to affect the military balance of power in the Gulf, where the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet is based, operating out of the island nation of Bahrain.

For example, the Hoot torpedo — if indeed based on the Shkval — has too short a range, about 7,500 yards, to be militarily significant, said Pavel Felgenhauer, a Russian analyst.