Iran showing off new video to say it flew a drone over a U.S. aircraft carrier
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
The last thing that US needs to do is get provoked. Ignoring the idiots is the right course of action. But will the US do that? I doubt it. Because we have our own set of idiots too, who love to play cowboys.
While the people can say elect a president the Religious leadership has veto rights into who is going to actually run basically how Iranian elections start is that you have a bunch (were talking 50 or more candidates) of candidate starting the race about half of them get rejected immediately by the religious authorities the rest "decline" to run and you end up with 1 or 2 candidates in the final race in which always one of them wins in a land slide mostly because the entire election process is fixed by the Supreme Leader.
The so call "belligerent" faction in Iran is under the direct control of the Supreme Leader and this isn't exactly a country where one does what ever they think. This is a country with well over a 1000 executions each year you won't have politicians sending out embarrassing letters or generals speaking out of term unless they want to either face a firing squad or have their necks stretched out.
You don't say... http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/16/the-counted-k...
> Marks said a U.S. Navy helicopter was launched from the Truman to get a closer look at the drone, and personnel on board determined it was not armed before it traveled directly over the ship.
That's some serious professionalism!
If Iranian drones are really a threat, they can quickly be turned into a non-threat one way or another.
Iran is making a power play in the region one of the outcomes of the deal is that the US have lost the "respect" of most of it's allies in the region (and I'm not talking about Israel but about SA and the gulf states).
This incident just like the incident a week ago with the captured US sailors is pretty much an embarrassment to the US in a region where your image and reputation mean allot.
This isn't something aimed against the US to show that Iran can deal with them, this is aimed at all the countries in the region showing that Iran can pull down their (US) pants so everyone could have a laugh without a reprisal.
The US has lost it's only card it had against Iran which was the sanctions, it can no longer enforce any sanctions regardless of what they are for Iran has stated that sanctions against them even if they are due to their support of terrorism or due to their long range ballistic missile program will constitute a violation of the nuclear deal.
Europe has already swarmed the Iranian market it was a market they desperately needed especially with sanctions over Russia and with China importing less and less goods from the EU. Iranian economy is ripe for rapid growth they had a huge automotive industry in the past, they have a big (even if severely outdated) energy section and unlike most countries in the region Iran actually has a good primary and higher education systems which means that you actually have a fairly large pool of educated professionals to draw from even if Iranian schools are quite behind the west they are still better than any other country in the region except for Israel.
Iran is Turkey but with considerable energy reserves and an educated population if it wasn't being ruled by an authoritarian religious regime it could've been one of the biggest economies in the world easily. Even with their current handicap they have the potential to rival the likes of Canada and the big European economies especially if they finally will be ready for another revolution that will dismantle the mullahs and the IRGC.