Recently in Iran Category

Cunning Realist airs speculation I've heard from a couple other sources today: that giving Obama the Nobel Peace prize could be the Nobel committee's way of trying to short-circuit an Obama attack on Iran. Surely the Nobel peace laureate wouldn't turn around and start a war with the Iranians, yes? Hmm...

Not good. Not good.:

For years now, Tehran has been working hard to acquire sophisticated Russian antiaircraft missiles that would make it far tougher for Israeli planes to stage a successful attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. One Israeli lawmaker, Zeev Elkin, even warned last week that delivering the missiles could even speed up the timing of an Israeli air raid. "I hope Moscow understands that the deliveries will at least speed up such events, if not trigger them," Elkin told the Russian daily Kommersant. Experts estimate that a working Iranian nuclear weapon is still probably at least a year away, depending on a host of contingencies. But the Russian missiles, which just might ensure that Iran's nuclear installations can be protected from attack, could be delivered at any time. So it's easy to understand why, right now, Israeli minds seem to be focused on the more urgent of these two ticking clocks.

The AP is reporting that the International Atomic Energy Agency has concluded in secret that Iran not only already possesses nuclear weapons capabilities, but is working on a long-range missile to deliver the thing.

If that's true, then it gives added gravity to Stratfor's chilling assessment from the other day (thanks to the reader who passed it on to me). Excerpt:

We are reminded of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis only in this sense: We get the sense that everyone is misreading everyone else. In the run-up to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Americans didn't believe the Soviets would take the risks they did and the Soviets didn't believe the Americans would react as they did. In this case, the Iranians believe the United States will play its old game and control the Israelis. Washington doesn't really understand that Netanyahu may see this as the decisive moment. And the Russians believe Netanyahu will be controlled by an Obama afraid of an even broader conflict than he already has on his hands.

The current situation is not as dangerous as the Cuban Missile Crisis was, but it has this in common: Everyone thinks we are on a known roadmap, when in reality, one of the players -- Israel -- has the ability and interest to redraw the roadmap. Netanyahu has been signaling in many ways that he intends to do just this. Everyone seems to believe he won't. We aren't so sure.

Terry Mattingly has some shocking information (if true) about the icon of the ongoing Iranian unrest.

Well, Khamenei and his bunch are in real trouble now. They've killed a young woman, and it was caught on video, and she has a name, and her name, allegedly, is Neda ("the calling"). They've made a martyr. Here is the clip in which Neda dies after having been shot by a basij sniper. WARNING: this is graphic:

Meanwhile, the latest reports from Tehran are that the government has deployed thousands of security officers, and the capital is quiet. Will this have been the Tiananmen Square of the putative Iranian revolution? By which I mean, is that the end of it, effectively? Or will there be a national strike?