Inside the Asylum

It's always been assumed that if Israel were to strike Iran, it would be via one or more air raids. We've already heard rumors about negotiations with Saudi Arabia to use their airspace, as the Americans seem unwilling to allow Israeli jets to pass through their zone of control around Iraq. Despite Israel's fairly good relationship with Turkey, they'd be unlikely to allow their territory to be used for an attack on Iran. Is there another option? I'd wondered for a while if there was a maritime alternative, and now I have an answer:

An Israeli submarine has sailed through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea in a trip that Israeli media are interpreting as a warning signal to Iran. An Israeli defense official said Saturday the Dolphin-class submarine made the passage last month from a Mediterranean navel base to take part in maneuvers off the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat... Israel does not publish details of the type of armaments it possesses but some foreign media reports say Dolphin-class subs can fire nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.

It's struck me all along that the Israelis, if acting alone, have only option and that is to nuke Iran back into the stone age. If you're dealing with a hornet's nest, you don't poke it with a stick. Iran's dispersal and hardening of its nuclear sites means that a conventional assault could not be guaranteed to wipe out Iran's ability to strike back with nukes.

The Iraqi government has gotten overly ambitious with its oil assets. They might find that no one is prepared to cough up the money for the infrastructure to extract it. Iraq can hardly afford that kind of loss of revenue.

Iraq closed the oil auction on Tuesday after awarding just one of the eight fee-paying contracts on offer, to a consortium led by British oil major BP... the government said it was prepared to pay maximum fees of around $2 (Dh7.34) a barrel for most contracts... The $2 fee - which BP accepted after initially pitching for $3.99 a barrel - would make Iraqi barrels among the lowest margin barrels in the world...
"The Iraqis have been pushing operators hard on costs and in some cases operators have preferred to walk away rather than accept an uneconomic solution," a source at one of the companies said...
Iraq plans to hold another bid round later this year, offering companies the opportunity to invest in undeveloped fields. However, after Tuesday's result, analysts said they were pessimistic about its chances. A senior executive at Maersk Oil and Gas, which participated in the bidding on Tuesday, said he was unsure whether his company would participate in the next round.

Pravda reports:

Obama comes to Moscow to prevent another Cold War.

Sounds good until you look over the rest of the page and see that they also report:

Weird hairy females seduce hot-blooded Caucasian men
Ancient nuclear blasts and levitating stones of Shivapur
Vampires are proved to exist

In other words, Pravda gives more accurate coverage of world events than the American MSM.