Tehran, June 29: ‘Deep” underground missile silos with iron roofs, a televised launch of Iran’s Shehab-3 missiles – with a 2,000km range (and we all know what that means) – even a suitably Islamic title to the military “games”, “Great Prophet-6”, the whole shebang. Nothing new, of course, for the Islamic Republic has been threatening to respond to any attacks on its territory for years. But “deep silos” have something of a ring about them. If Israel and/or America decides to attack the country’s nuclear facilities, then they’re going to get bashed in return. Supposedly.
In the old days, we used to call this mutual deterrence. And since US forces virtually surround Iran – in Iraq to the west, in Afghanistan to the east, in the former Soviet Muslim republics to the north and in the Gulf waters to the south, the Iranians would have – to use the US military’s own jargon – a “target-rich environment”. If, that is, the Iranian missiles actually work as intended.
For in at least one previous tub-thumping exercise, the Iranian military went to great pains to doctor a photograph of a missile launch that deleted one rocket which in reality plunged back to the desert floor shortly after being fired.