From Roadside Bombs to Atomic Bombs

Dan from New York:

Here's a neat idea, gang. Let's give these guys nuclear weapons!

The revelations of possible Iranian involvement in the attack on Israeli diplomats earlier this month in Jordan appear to offer the latest evidence of direct engagement by Teheran in subversion and paramilitary activity across national borders.

The Jordanian investigation is still in its early stages. But the suggestion by sources close to the well-respected Jordanian General Intelligence Department that the explosives used for the attack may have been brought into the kingdom by Iranian diplomats is certainly plausible. It would conform to similar incidents on which the fingerprints of Iran were later unmistakably identified. It would also fit the current pattern of Iranian support for destabilizing its regional enemies.

...A cold war is on in the region - pitting Islamist Iran and its allies against pro-Western states. Like other such phenomena in the past, this cold war has a number of fronts, and a number of faces... [including] a clandestine-warfare aspect, in which the Revolutionary Guard and its many regional clients seek to destabilize and subvert rival states and regimes. This is a side of the conflict which only occasionally and fleetingly reveals itself to the public eye.

The latest revelations suggest that the roadside bombing on January 14 on the Dead Sea Highway from Amman may well have formed an engagement on this front of the ongoing regional contest.

Insert your own sardonic Clenched Fist™ remark here.