Jennifer Dyer tells us why.

Iran: Now for the not-so-funny part

Alternate title: Sink the Kharg!

Intellectual honesty required putting the recent threats issued by Iran in a realistic perspective.  While we should take Iran’s geopolitical posture seriously, it does our own deliberations a disservice to accept absurdities from Iran rather than calling them out.  Someone’s bound to notice eventually, so it’s best to sort the nonsense out up front.

That said, we should be concerned about what Iran has been doing in the last 48-72 hours.  This is not because Iran can make good on threats like those depicted in the truly moronic Lenziran video (see link above); it’s because the Iranian regime has escalated its verbal attacks dramatically.  These aren’t random bursts of rhetoric.  They appear to have a specific purpose.

Other developments suggest what it is.  Iran may be setting the stage for a period of high-stakes brinkmanship in order to cross the nuclear threshold in 2014.

The Talk

Adam Kredo reported on Sunday that an Iranian naval official has lobbed yet another snark bomb at the United States, barely a day after the warning that the Iranian navy was approaching “U.S. maritime borders.”  Kredo quotes the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy (IRGCN) issuing a threat to U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf:

“The Americans can sense by all means how their warships will be sunk with 5,000 crews and forces in combat against Iran and how they should find its hulk in the depths of the sea,” Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, the commander of the elite Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy, was quoted as saying Sunday in the regional press.

The reference to “5,000 crews” makes this, most explicitly, a threat to the U.S. aircraft carrier.  (Admiral Fadavi’s allusion to “Americans sensing how their warships will be sunk” might almost suggest he is reading commentary at LU…)

The Iranians have made verbal threats a number of times in the past.  But they are making multiple threats in concert this time, as Kredo indicates when he includes the menacing statements of Ayatollah Khamenei, also made on Sunday:

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei also took aim at the United States … when he urged Air Force commanders to “know the enemy well.”

Khamenei made arrestingly pointed comments about the U.S. posture in nuclear negotiations:

“The Iranian nation should pay attention to the recent [nuclear] negotiations and the rude remarks of the Americans so that everyone gets to know the enemy well,” Khamenei was quoted as saying in the state-run press.

“The Americans speak in their private meetings with our officials in one way, and they speak differently outside these meetings; this is hypocrisy and the bad and evil will of the enemy and the nation should observe all these cases precisely,” he said.

And as Kredo observes, another naval official issued another challenge on Sunday:

… another top Iranian Navy commander claimed that the United States does not have the courage or ability to attack Iran.

“Were the enemy able to inflict damage on us, it would do so; [you must] rest assured that they can’t,” Iranian Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari told fellow navy personnel during a ceremony celebrating “the 35th anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution.”

Americans (and Israelis) aren’t the only audience these Iranian officials are addressing this stream of rhetoric to.  To my ear, it sounds like they’re talking to the Iranian people as much as to foreign auditors.

To the escalating rhetoric, we can add two other circumstances that have not existed before, when Iran was issuing threats about the U.S. military.  One is the voyage of Sabalan and Kharg to the Americas.