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Iran's Military Display A Bluff, Analysts Say

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The New York Times

Published: July 12, 2008

Iran's war games this week featured more bluff and exaggeration than displays of menacing new power, military analysts said Friday.

The half truths, the analysts said, included not only a doctored photo of a salvo firing but misleading statements about the range of the largest missile and two videos that made the firings seem more numerous and fearsome than they really were.

"Deception was rampant," said Charles Vick, an expert on the Iranian missile program at GlobalSecurity.org, a research group in Alexandria, Va. "The bottom line is that the Iranians are tweaking our noses."

The missile firings on Wednesday and Thursday shook the oil markets, helping drive up the price of crude to a record of more than $147 a barrel on Friday from $136 on Wednesday. That rise, if sustained, would mean billions of added dollars for Iran, one of the world's top oil exporters.

Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, estimated that the oil price increase would add up to $25 million a day to Iran's economy and wondered whether that was accidental or deliberate.

Aside from the theater of the missile firings and the prospect of windfall oil revenues, Allison said, "the question is, does this represent any significant advance in any relevant military capability to do any damage? And I think the best judgment is, no."

The Iranians, he added, "have a history of puffing out their chests and pounding on them."

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