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Iran has warned that airlines will be banned from flying into its airspace, unless they use the term "Persian Gulf" on their in-flight monitors.The transport minister has threatened to impound planes that fail to comply. The nation is most insistent that the stretch of water separating it from its southern neighbours should be known as the Persian Gulf. To call it the Gulf, annoys the authorities; to call it the Arabian Gulf, infuriates them even more.

As for the minister, Hamid Behbahani, it may or may not be a coincidence that he is making a stand on this patriotic matter at a time when he is facing calls for his impeachment for alleged lack of competence.

If Israel hit Iran's nuclear facilities, would Hezbollah, Iran's allies in Lebanon, join in to retaliate? Would America step in to help its best friend in the Middle East? This filmed simulation shows a group of Israeli ex-spooks, former politicians and military officials split into teams to role-play the consequences. I have not seen the full film, but was in the cutting room for a couple of days helping with translation and the scenes I saw were compelling. Team Israel, taking stock of Iranian missile attacks on civilian targets, makes the operational assumption that the situation won't spiral totally out of control.

The documentary has an interview with an Iranian former nuclear negotiator and foreign policy adviser, who returns the simulated salvo by saying that Israel has grossly underestimated Iran's capacity for retaliation. Iran, he says, would assume American complicity in any Israeli attack and take aim at US targets in the Middle East. When the US staged their own simulation of this same situation, in March, it predicted that an Israeli strike would lead to a wider regional war.

the UK is thinking about putting warplanes in the Persian Gulf as tensions rise. And American military commanders have warned Israel that an attack on Iran could stunt US action, by cutting off key logistics support from Gulf countries that host US bases.

Army chief Ataollah Salehi said the United States had moved an aircraft carrier out of the Gulf because of Iran's naval exercises, and Iran would take action if the ship returned."Iran will not repeat its warning ... the enemy's carrier has been moved to the Sea of Oman because of our drill. I recommend and emphasise to the American carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf....we are not in the habit of warning more than once," he said.

After years of measures that had little impact, the new sanctions are the first that could have a serious effect on Iran's oil trade, which is 60 percent of its economy.Sanctions signed into law by U.S. President Barack Obama on New Year's Eve would cut financial institutions that work with Iran's central bank off from the U.S. financial system, blocking the main path for Iran to receive payments for its crude.

The EU is expected to impose new sanctions by the end of this month, possibly including a ban on oil imports and a freeze of central bank assets.

the Clinton administration entered office in 1993 and proceeded to adopt a strategy of "dual containment." Until that moment, the United States had acted as an "offshore balancer" in the Persian Gulf, and we had carefully refrained from deploying large air or ground force units there on a permanent basis. We had backed the Shah of Iran since the 1940s, and then switched sides and tilted toward Iraq during the 1980s. Our goal was to prevent any single power from dominating this oil-rich region, and we cleverly played competing powers off against each other for several decades. With dual containment, however, the United States had committed itself to containing two different countries -- Iran and Iraq -- who hated each other, which in turn forced us to keep lots of airplanes and troops in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. We did this, as both Kenneth Pollack and Trita Parsi have documented, because Israel wanted us to do it, and U.S. officials foolishly believed that doing so would make Israel more compliant during the Oslo peace process. But in addition to costing a lot more money, keeping U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia for the long term also fueled the rise of al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden was deeply offended by the presence of "infidel" troops on Saudi territory, and so the foolish strategy of dual containment played no small role in causing our terrorism problem. It also helped derail several attempts to improve relations between the United States and Iran. Dual containment, in short, was a colossal blunder.

But no strategy is so bad that somebody else can't make it worse. And that is precisely what George W. Bush did after 9/11. Under the influence of neoconservatives who had opposed dual containment because they thought it didn't go far enough, Bush adopted a new strategy of "regional transformation." Instead of preserving a regional balance of power, or containing Iraq and Iran simultaneously, the United States was now going to use its military power to topple regimes across the Middle East and turn those countries into pro-American democracies. This was social engineering on a scale never seen before. The American public and the Congress were unenthusiastic, if not suspicious, about this grand enterprise, which forced the Bush administration to wage a massive deception campaign to get them on board for what was supposed to be the first step in this wildly ambitious scheme. The chicanery worked, and the United States launched its unnecessary war on Iraq in March 2003.

wrecking Iraq -- which is what we did -- destroyed the balance of power in the Gulf and improved Iran's geopolitical position. The invasion of Iraq also diverted resources away from the war in Afghanistan, which allowed the Taliban to re-emerge as a formidable fighting force. Thus, Bush's decision to topple Saddam in 2003 led directly to two losing wars, not just one. And these wars were enormously expensive to boot. Combined with Bush's tax cuts and other fiscal irresponsibilities, this strategic incompetence caused the federal deficit to balloon to dangerous levels and helped bring about the fiscal impasse that we will be dealing with for years to come.

The deal includes 96 missiles, along with supporting technology and training support

The deal includes a contract with Lockheed Martin to produce the highly sophisticated Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, weapon system for the U.A.E.

it was the first foreign military sale of the THAAD system.

In a meeting with Iran’s top military brass, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, “The U.S. nuclear threat against Iran is unforgivable.” According to Kayhan, a pro-government newspaper with close links to the Supreme Leader, Khamenei said that those countries that have used nuclear weapons against other countries cannot be trusted. Khamenei called on the country’s military forces to be prepared in dealing with any potential threat.

Pro-government newspapers and websites dedicated significant space to Obama’s remarks and Iran’s harsh response to them. Of Kayhan’s six front page stories, five of them on April 12 were related to Obama’s remarks, the reaction of Iranian officials to those remarks, and the potential consequences of a military strikes against Iran.

Brig Gen Ahmad-Reza Pourdastan, the commander of ground forces of the Iranian military, said April 12, “Countries that support any incursion against Iran will also be perceived as enemies,” warning Iran’s neighbors and U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf.