Free Republic

"Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately "Open for Business," we will conclude our lovely "stay" in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet "touched."

For the past two weeks Iran has committed a sizable portion of its military to rehearsing how it would go about closing the Hormuz Strait. For the most part, strategic analysts yawned, and declared Iranian blustering to be an empty threat. Judging from the oil markets’ relatively muted reaction, it appears that most of the folks who bet big money on what happens in the Persian Gulf share this opinion. So what is this consensus based on? First and foremost, it relies on the belief that the Iranian leadership will make a number of rational calculations and decisions concerning their...

TEHRAN, - Iranian state TV says the country has set up offices on a Persian Gulf island also claimed by the United Arab Emirates. Monday's report quotes an Iranian marine official, Ali Taheri Motlaq, as saying Iran has set up two offices on Abu Musa island. He says one is a marine rescue center and the other is a registration office for ships and sailors.