Troubling, Perhaps

So, the Iranians are destroying individual satellite dishes a week before their answer to the UN on nukes and are also launching a country-wide military exercise said to be running for an extended period. Meanwhile, North Korea could be preparing for an underground nuclear test. Should we make anything of all this?

I suppose if we want to take a guess and connect the dots we are seeing, whether they are genuinely connected or not, there is some amount of co-operation between North Korea and Iran. We know that from the Iranians attending North Korea's recent missile tests.

But the North Korea move could be a diversion for a test somewhere else, as all that has been observed is the movement of cables underground. India and Pakistan both managed to conceal their underground tests - why not North Korea, too?

My best guess, North Korea is muddying the waters as they always do when Iran's nukes grab the stage. Iran is, obviously, going to tell the UN to stick it and may be anticipating a strike on their facilities by the US.

It's at least conceivable to imagine them retaliating by attempting to strike at US forces in Iraq, gambling that Bush would not dare risk any type of actual invasion into Iran and limit the conflict to fighting them there. If the US were suddenly blind sided by a disastrous attack on our troops, perhaps in the form of high numbers of suicide bombers, an attack Iran might try and plausibly deny, Ahmaninejad could be gambling it will inflame anti-war sentiment in the US and ultimately lead to a pull-out from Iraq, leaving it for Iran to eventually control.

Iran's statement after Lebanon was that it proved that Bush's model for the Middle East would not succeed To completely upset that model, Iran cannot allow the US to prevail in Iraq. Just the same, they are preparing Iran for war, as they cannot be certain of what will eventuate.

See here also here and here.

Update: via lgf Here's a particularly vulgar bit of propaganda from Hezbollah. I hope Israel accounted for all their dead, which makes the scene all the more macabre, in a sense.