All Bark

For those of our readers who are tired of hearing about the pointless verbal attacks and useless posturing going on in the GOP Presidential nomination race, or the pointless verbal attacks and useless posturing going on in the U.S. Senate race in Nebraska, we thought we'd change things up today by focusing on a subject that hasn't garnered many headlines lately.

That subject is the pointless verbal attacks and posturing going on between Iran and nations all over the world.

In case you missed it - and the so-called news organizations in the U.S. have made it easy to miss - for some time now, there has been a growing level of tension between Iran and other nations, both those it sees as enemies and those it sees as allies.

The two major topics of contention, of course, are the enrichment of uranium, for the purpose of making nuclear weapons and the transport of oil from the Persian Gulf.

It wasn't a shock to anyone on Wednesday when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton 'categorically denied' any U.S. involvement in the assassination of a top Iranian nuclear scientist. He was killed in what Iran's government is labeling a 'terrorist car bombing' earlier in the day. However diplomatic Madame Secretary has to be with these kinds of announcements, we're fairly certain she was 100% honest when she said the U.S. wasn't actually involved, this time.

One major reason for that position is that the U.S. has no reason to rile up either Prime Minister Ahmadinejad or the other source of political authority in Iran, the mullahs.

The other reason is that the world economy could suffer if Iran shut off its oil production - and virtually every country on the planet knows that.

Iran's leaders have been threatening friend and foe alike for some time now. Should anyone anger them too much, they've promised Iran's navy will try to shut down the Straits of Hormuz, the only way tanker ships can get in and out of the Persian Gulf. In turn, that would drive the price of oil through the roof and serve as a major punch to the gut of economies all over the world - including to Iran itself.

As a recent Reuters article noted, "To block the Gulf would verge on economic suicide [for Iran]: Petroleum products account for 20 percent of Iran’s gross domestic product, 80 percent of exports and 70 percent of its government revenue."

In short, Iran would be cutting off the world to spite themselves, an action that would likely end up finally pushing the Iranian people to declare another civil war, and overthrow their leaders.

It's no secret that some in the U.S. military and diplomatic sector would like to help new Iranian revolutionaries overthrow the current regime. That wish has been the same in some high-level enclaves stretching all the way back to the Reagan years.

The fact is, the U.N. authorized sanctions already in place have been causing an ever-greater level of hardship in Iran over time. If diplomacy is used wisely, Iranian politicians and the mullahs may have to deal with putting out their own political fires before they worry about taking a bite out of anyone else. In the meantime, even as other nations assume their own assertive postures against Iran's sabre-rattling, the U.S. government remains the primary target for Iran's pointless verbal attacks and pointless posing.

In short, for more reasons than we can list here, the barking of some in Iran, that the U.S. and the West are going to attack them - or that Iran is doing nothing that warrants attention - simply doesn't stand up in our collective opinion. Until the price of alternative fuels drops significantly, Iran isn't going to bite - and no other country is going to seriously smack Iran on the nose, either.

As a friend of one of our staffers is known to say, "That dog don't hunt."