Bad Analysis Becomes Good Analysis

Long War: I've given you all a raft of bad analysis concerning the brewing Iran crisis. Sorry. But now we have the good stuff on tap...

For the last two years there has been a two pronged covert campaign against Iran's nuclear weapons development program: 1) Assassination of top scientists. 2) Sabotage of Iranian centrifuges and other nuke devices by computer virus and perhaps other means.

We know that the CIA along with NSA and Britain's MI5 have been running the sabotage campaign because German industrial giant Siemens and other huge multi-national companies were involved in creating the Stuxnet virus. Siemens was essentially declaring war against Iran by joining this effort, putting its own employees at risk from Iranian retaliation, plus the Stuxnet virus infected Siemens industrial equipment outside of Iran. There is no way Siemens stuck its neck out like that at Israel's behest.

We also know that the two campaigns were coordinated very closely because one of the assassinations involved an Iranian scientist on the verge of putting a software patch over Stuxnet. He was killed right before the patch was complete.

So this makes you think the CIA was in charge of the whole enchilada. I thought this was also true because there were several obvious signs left behind by the early assassins that made you think Israel was running this part of the two-pronged campaign. It seemed too obvious, a red herring. But Israel is now saying openly (using the obscure language of diplomacy) that it has been behind these assassinations all along. The US, Britain, and Iran are essentially saying the same thing. Probably there is a hardened cadre of Iranian Jews inside the country working for Israel and the Iranian government does not know these people are Jewish.

Final nail in the coffin: Today Israeli and American intelligence officials gave a warning that Iran's puppet, Hezbollah, is sending bomb making expertise to bolster Thailand's Islamic insurgency. The fact that Iran is increasing its global terror footprint is interesting in and of itself but it also shows that the CIA and Mossad are now speaking with one voice. The charade that the CIA and Mossad are not joined at the hip has been shredded.

So the CIA has been authorizing all these assassinations by Mossad except for the most recent one, which is an example of Mossad going rogue against the Western alliance (that it is a part of) and not an example of the CIA going rogue as it did in the 50s and 80s. The American led alliance does not want war at this juncture, but Israel does. On a practical basis for you and me (retail investors), a rogue CIA is bullish. A rogue Mossad in unpredictable.

Meanwhile, on the Mideastern battlefield, America is funneling weapons and ordnance into the Gulf Arab militaries at a furious pace. America is loading the Gulf Arab allies for bear. On the water, Iranian speedboats are buzzing US warships, making practice runs at them. So I was probably wrong when I said Iran would sow the Strait of Hormuz with mines and not directly attack the 5th Fleet.

Saudi Arabia is saying it can put 2 million barrels a day of extra oil on the market when and if war explodes in the Gulf or if a total boycott of Iranian oil were to occur. This means OPEC no longer exists. So just the prelude to war has changed the economic structure of the world.

Worrisome: A while ago the US Navy ran an exercise designed to mimic a likely tactic of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Navy. The bad guy tactic is to overwhelm big warships with hundreds of tiny speedboats loaded with proximity bombs as well as traditional weapons. True to form, this tactic would require the small speedboats to engage in suicide (how jihadist). Anyway, the exercise showed this tactic is pretty effective. Also, Iranian shore batteries are harder to hit than I previously thought and they occupy about one thousand miles of shoreline. When and if war erupts, it will be no walk in the park for the good guys.

Opinion polls within Iran show that support for Hezbollah is unpopular as is support for Syria. The Iranian public does not like Iranian force projection at the borders of Israel. However, the Iranian nuclear program is very popular with the Iranian public. They will fight to keep this program alive. And the now obvious involvement of Israel in an Islamic war is not good. After the war at sea and in the air is over there will be some sort of land war. President Obama has recently said America doesn't do conventional land wars any more. Yeah right.

America is tired of war. War is not tired of America.