July 20: True To Form
True to form, Iran inflated its missile test results with retouched photos. It managed to spook the price of oil back up a few bucks and it seems that may have been the real goal after all.
When you are running a repressive regime with a 25 to 45 percent inflation rate and 20 percent unemployment, the merchants, the actual muscle that ran the Shah out in the '70s, tends to get a little uncomfortable with your agenda not working so well and you try to do something to keep the cash flow coming in. At $147 a barrel, crude oil is keeping the mullah councils from the wolves better than it did at $125, so spook away it will.
The missile tests have been scrutinized and were found less than impressive, both by Iran's potential arms consumers and those the regime has said it will "wipe off the face of the earth." What is apparent is a nation with growing dissatisfaction, well be yond what we see anywhere in the west.
When the oil traders realize Iran's military muscle flexing is as much crying wolf as it is would, they will be less likely to panic and the desired cash influx to the regime will be less impressive.
That being said, Iran's true weapon of choice, what it will fall back on to save face, is its' surrogate terror cells.
Hidden away in southern Beirut, training on islands in the Arabian Gulf and attempting to stage themselves in border line encampments, and hidden in other Arab states, they will be called on to make some statements of force when the regime blunders through another exercise, or fails to deliver in the eyes of its' subjects.
So long as the intelligence is good and well supported; the threat can be kept at bay, and a massive reaction avoided.
Bill Bala
Mineola
Mineola
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