Keeping score

Iran is still playing coy about its enriched uranium manufacturing capabilities. It's brinkmanship. They're pushing the UN and the USA to see how much they can get away with. I therefore conclude that the lesson of Iraq was not a deterrent as US forces are effectively locked in place, fully extended, unable to redeploy rapidly, and thus incapable of exerting pressure in coercive diplomacy. Therefore, the US isn't deemed a credible threat.

Judging from the recent attack on foreign oil workers in Saudi Arabia, al Qaida is apparently playing a careful game of targeted oil infrastructure by killing non-Muslim Westerners while at the same time avoiding targeting the Saudi royal family or the refineries themselves in order to avoid the consolidation of opinion against them. The fact that three militants escaped three rings of security to freedom is troubling. Did someone on the inside give them information on how to get out? One source reported that a European was beheaded, his head hurled out a window. I'd hate to see that be verified as a trend, as it would mean they're copycats in an ugly way; in an earlier attack in Khobar, the body of an Westerner was dragged through the streets behind a car, perhaps in imitation of the desecration of contractors' bodies in Fallujah.