Wednesday November 14, 2012

I've Been Thinking:

Iran is in the third day of a weeklong military exercise. The exercise will include 8,000 soldiers, planes, rockets, missiles and ships and it will cover huge swaths of area covering thousands of miles.

It is Iran’s largest ever military exercise and is being heralded with great bluster and propaganda. Iran has promised to unroll their three newest weapons which, word has it, include short range defense missiles.

There are two or problems with Iran's military games. First of all, the Iranians tend to exaggerate. They hype their weapons to make them look more powerful than they really are to frighten and intimidate their enemies and impress their citizens.

Second is that the Iranians often pass off old versions of weapons as new. Sometimes they revamp and repaint them. Sometimes they take imported weapons and try to embellish them or make them look Iranian.

That said, there have been some real technical surprises coming out of Iran, but none of them in the field of missiles.

In the end, this weeklong event is probably nothing more than a large, drawn out, propaganda tool. But we are still watching it very carefully.

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