Amid the media's fixations on the New Hampshire primary (and it's own wildly erroneous polls and reporting), a truly momentous event is almost being ignored.But not by Austin Bay.
Why would five Iranian speedboats bluff an attack on a U.S. Navy squadron?
Start with a big fact: Under the mullah-led thieves' regime, Iran has become an explosive political mix of ethnic, economic and ideological fragments, a mosaic powder keg.
The Ayatollah Khomeini's 1979 Islamic Revolution failed, then fossilized, leaving a corrupt junta of robed kleptocrats who use the dictator's classic tools of murder, terror and economic favoritism to control an impoverished, splintered and increasingly restless populace.
Moreover, factions within the mullahs' hierarchy spar with one another. Throwing a risky punch at the United States or Great Britain serves two distinct purposes. Armed bravado directed at "the Great Satan" and British imperialists appeals to Iranian nationalists -- at least, it has in the past. Khomeinist radicals, like Iranian president Mahmoud Amadinejad, contend that confrontation with the United States also strengthens them.
The reasoning may appear convoluted, wickedly Byzantine, but if Iran's domestic malaise continues to get worse, and domestic tensions seed violent street demonstrations, the most radical Khomeinists apparently believe dramatic attacks on U.S. forces -- such as the destruction of a U.S. Navy capital warship -- enhance their political position. Their willingness to run great risks demonstrates they are "the true believers." An extended confrontation with the United States also gives them the opportunity to portray their domestic opponents as traitors -- and then kill them...
Here's the rest of this illuminating column.
