Difficult game. More poker than chess.

The Iranians cannot hope to outspend or beat the US and Israel in military technology.

They can hope to beat us by political manuevers at which they are adept. They can hope to split us, yet while political issues remain the miltary/intellegence alliance is formidable. Furthermore Israel has broadened its level of covert and overt cooperation with Egypt and Jordon and we can guess, others in the gulf as well.

See the news about what just happened in Dubai. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/01/world/main6162947.shtml

Pure top level stuff and arrests have occured since in Israel, and certainly much else we will never see as a result. The spies and assasins are very busy now and I think the Persians are losing that war.

They cannot win on economics and are in political turmoil greater than we can imagine here.

Good idea to call out the missile destroyers and sell what we have in missile defense to the gulf states. Even a 50% threat reduction by defense costs the Iranians where it hurts.

We could win on that if we had the right direction.

Spindok