Relax Mahmoud, we're just practicing...

To squash you like a grape.

**********
UPDATE: Iran just shit its drawers

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki discounted the possibility of an escalation in the crisis, suggesting the British vessels may have made a mistake.

“This is a violation that just happened. It could be natural. They did not resist,” he said.

Manouchehr Mottaki had a bad dream last night about being chased all the way to paradise by a snarling pack of cruise missiles.

Hey Manny, you want terror, we'll show you terror.

**********

Of course this exercise is totally co-incidental.

Understandably though, if having two of the world's most powerful aircraft carriers and 10,000 plus men on hair-trigger alert just off-shore is making anybody nervous... maybe they could stop behaving like chimpanzees on crack and pay some attention to international law.

If that happened, I can just about guarantee it would all go away.

The US Navy has begun its most extensive manoeuvres in the Gulf region since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but denies sabre-rattling aimed at Iran.

Two aircraft carriers, plus their strike groups, have sailed to the region and have begun war games involving as many as 100 US war planes. Each US strike group incorporates an aircraft carrier, a submarine and four or five frigates or destroyers.

The exercises involve more than 10,000 US personnel on warships and aircraft making simulated attacks on enemy shipping with aircraft and ships, hunting enemy submarines and finding mines, the Associated Press reported.

Even the French were quick to pooh-pooh the notion that this "exercise" had anything to do with Iran's bellicose behaviour.

Heck... who doesn't believe the French?

Also in the Arabian Sea is a French carrier group, led by the Charles de Gaulle, which is flying missions to Afghanistan.

France is part of the European troika that has been pressing Iran to halt uranium enrichment - a plea it has rejected.

However, Lt-Cmdr Bertrand Bonneau, chief of press for the French navy, said the deployment had "nothing at all" to do with exerting pressure on Iran.

There... you feeling better now?

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