Iran Now Rattling Sabres

The Iranians seem to be prepared for the worst and behaving in provocative ways. They are now consolidating positions, are under full mobilization along the Iraqi and Afghani border. Air defenses are activated around key command and control locations including Tehran. It appears they are planning extended military exersizes that could last well in October.
Today there is news that Iranian military forces have taken an oil platform by force of arms off Iran's Persian Gulf coast. There is no reports of casualties but shots have been fired and the oil platform boarded and seized. Iran has been engaged in a dispute of unclear dimensions with this company for some time. This US friendly Romanian company and oil platform has had ties to Haliburton. It is located near the strategic Straits of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world's daily oil supply moves on tankers. Clearly Iran is signaling it's ability to control this vital oil choke point.
Globalresearch.ca

War games and military exercises are now well underway within Iran and its territory. The Iranian Armed Forces—the Regular Armed Forces and the Revolutionary Guards Corps—began the first stage of massive nationwide war games along border areas of the province of Sistan and Baluchistan1 in the southeast of Iran bordering the Gulf of Oman, Pakistan, and NATO garrisoned Afghanistan to the east on Saturday, August 19, 2006. These war games that are underway are to unfold and intensify over a five week period and possibly even last longer, meaning they will continue till the end of September and possibly overlap into October, 2006. It is worth noting that the Iranian war games are taking place within the window of time that has been predicted by analysts for the initiation of an American or of an American-led attack against Iran.

Although the momentous war games are planned to take place in 14 of the total 30 provinces of Iran—most of which are border provinces and simultaneously sensitive and geo-strategically vital positions bordering, some of the most volatile places in the world, adjacent to Anglo-American occupied Iraq, the Persian Gulf, the Caucasus (Armenia and the Republic of Azarbaijan), the Caspian Sea, Turkey, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan—there have been conflicting reports about the initial stage(s) of the multi-dimensioned war games. Chinese sources maintain that the initial stages of the multi-phased Iranian war games have already started in the “northeastern, northwestern, western and southern parts of Iran,”2 meaning all the border provinces adjacent to U.S., American-led Coalition, and NATO forces—including Turkey, a NATO member and strategic Israeli ally—while Iranian and other Middle Eastern sources maintain that the first stages of the war games have been predominately inaugurated in southeast Iran.

Brigadier-General Mohammad-Reza Ashtiani, the deputy commander of the Iranian Army or Land Branch of the Regular Forces, has specifically accented at a press conference that ‘the war games will take place in the provinces of West Azarbaijan, East Azarbaijan, the Khorasans3, Kurdistan, and the province of Sistan and Baluchestan’4—all of these are Iranian border provinces that would be frontlines in any possible war between Iran and the United States and have been experiencing disturbing episodes of terrorist attacks, kidnappings, violence, and recent instability5—which Iran has held both the United States, Britain, and Israel responsible for.

[...]Participating in the war games, so far, from the Iranian Regular Forces—which are a under a separate command structure from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards15—are twelve land (army) divisions along with the Iranian Air Force, Iranian Naval Forces, and Iranian Missile units, which are all involved as complimentary mechanisms of the military exercise(s), which were initiated in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan16

Iran has been very conscious for a long time of the hostile American-led forces encircling Iran and on its borders in the occupied territories of its neighbours, Iraq and Afghanistan, and stationed in bases in other Iranian neighbours. It has also reported that the Interior Ministry of Iran also has simultaneously planned to boost border security and all border patrols under the premise of combating smuggling and narcotics trafficking. 17 Military manoeuvres and war games can be multi-faceted and could easily serve many purposes such as being masked military mobilization and formation for an expected attack under the pretext of training and testing.

It seems that the materialization of an escalating level of alert and defensive mobilization of the Iranian Armed Forces is taking place as an inevitable and anticipated showdown over the fate of the Iranian Nuclear Energy Program is drawing nearer and with it are coupled the fates of Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, the Persian Gulf, the direction of Central Asia, he strategic balance in the Caucasus, and so much more.

Truly, should this area ignite in war, the US would be hard pressed to impose it's will. The world economy would suffer a major recession and face the prospects of $100 a barrel oil. The Bush Administration blunders in Iraq has enflamed and put at risks all key interests in this volatile part of the world. And the winner so far has been Iran.