As if it wasn't obvious enough that Iran is trying to intimidate its neighbors, Israel and the U.S., it seems they've gone too far, even for the media. Yesterdays' news carried the statements that, according to our intelligence, the Iranian leadership has overstated the effectiveness of their nuclear enrichment program. Today, however, the Iranian leadership's scare-tactics have taken a seriously comic turn.
In the last two days, Iran has conducted a number of ballistic missile launches, which they describe as "tests". The clear intention is to show that Iran has the missile capacity to strike Middle Eastern capitals, including Tel-Aviv. These are not defensive missiles. The newspapers around the world displayed the official Iranian government photograph of the missile launch, showing four missiles rising into the air.
It seems, though, that the Iranians were being too cute, if not "too cute by half", then at least too cute by one-quarter. TheNew York Times is reporting that leading media, such as Agence-France Presse are withdrawing the photograph from their websites because the photograph is significantly digitally altered. Namely, one of those missiles is a photoshopped creation. Apparently, the Iranians pieced together the image of one of the missiles with an image of the dust cloud beneath another missile, to create the illusion of another missile.
One can only assume that someone in charge looked at the original photograph, and decided it didn't look impressive enough. The order must have come down to make it look like a more intimidating array by adding in a phony image of a non-existent missile. My conjecture -- there may be even more to this story. The AP has a photo showing three launches, with another missile on a truck in the foreground. Perhaps, there were supposed to be four missiles launched, but one missile didn't launch. Either way, it's amazing how this leadership consistently shows such contempt for and ignorance of the rest of the world. Yes, they were able to fool us for a few hours, but they were caught. There's a lesson there for all of us, and one hopes it's a lesson that Iran's leaders finally learn.