re: Iran’s war games and missile tests.

It’s time for their annual war games and this time they’re saying that the war games are: “message of peace and friendship to countries of the region…”

Right. They’re meant to intimidate and force other countries to either develop their own military systems or to send a message to Israel and the US/West that Iran’s going ahead with their missile/military weapons development.

The news that Iran has missile silos isn’t really a surprise either - they’ve been building their nuclear capabilities underground to avoid detection and to fortify their infrastructure against potential military strikes by Israel or the US. Hardening their facilities should be no surprise.

What is curious is that some of the footage showing missile launches doesn’t actually show the missiles launching off from their launchers, but rather shows them already in flight. I think that was a conscious decision to avoid the embarrassing gaffes where missiles failed to fire (and the resulting fauxtography to cover up the problems).

Iran’s also going ahead with plans to launch a monkey into space - which would be a logical step towards heavier payloads and longer range missiles.

All of this isn’t particularly surprising, but it is far from reassuring to Israel, which continues to be threatened by Iran on a regular basis and which is within range of Iranian missiles (both from Iran’s long range missiles, and the shorter range missiles within the clutches of Iran’s proxy Hizbullah; and Hamas)