Iran at War

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei announced today that if the U.S. attacks Iran, Iran will respond to the attacks by striking U.S. interests around the world. This is not an idle threat. As I've discussed before, Iran is quite capable of carrying out said strikes. Something to remember is that Iran controlled Hezbollah was, prior to 9/11, responsible for more U.S. deaths than any other terrorist group. Iran has a long history of conducting foreign terror strikes.

This news is particularly troubling in light of the Administration's continued refusal to take Iran's actions seriously. As Joe Katzman says at the previous link:

"I see. The Iranians run weapons to the Sunnis and Shi'ites, send personnel in country, and make every effort to kill US soldiers. But American leadership wouldn't want to expose this because (A) the guy who keeps threatening to incinerate Israel and destroy America might react badly, and (B) people would ask us why we aren't doing anything about it, like f'rinstance why we've been releasing Iranians when we capture them in Iraq, so they can go kill more American soldiers. That might make us look bad, or force us to make hard decisions. Better to keep quiet.

Betrayal is not too strong a word to describe this."

Indeed. He goes on to talk about how duty and loyalty is a two way street. Read the whole thing. American soldiers are more than willing to put their lives on the line for us every day. All they ask in return is that their political leaders give them the top cover to be able to do their job to the fullest. With Iran, the political leaders have denied the soldiers this top cover for 30 years. They kidnap our diplomats. We do nothing. They bomb our embassy. We do nothing. They bomb our barracks (twice). Still, nothing. They provide advanced weapons for the insurgency in Iraq, enabling the insurgents to become much more effective and kill larger numbers of U.S. troops. Nothing.

This is unacceptable. Those that kill U.S. soldiers and citizens, especially in as large of numbers as Iran's government has done, must be held accountable.