Tehran Bureau reports:
As the Iranian presidential election draws closer and the growing severity of Western sanctions makes life increasingly difficult for ordinary Iranians, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has staged war games it says are in defiance of Western threats against the country.
However, the military exercises, dubbed To Beyt al-Moghadas (To Jerusalem), are not centered around fighting a mock foreign enemy; rather, they display the Iranian force’s readiness to engage in urban warfare.
And photos (here and here) of these “war games” certainly don’t resemble anything that would happen in a war against Israel or the US.
For all the blood-curdling threats aimed at Israel and the West, I’m convinced that as Iran’s economy continues to tank, and ordinary Iranians become increasingly desperate, the country’s rulers are more concerned about a popular uprising (this time perhaps including segments of the working class) than they are about an attack against their nuclear facilities– which in fact they would probably welcome as a means of distracting an unhappy population.
