Iran's capabilities

Investor's Business Daily (if I link to them enough times, do I get a free subscription?) had a piece yesterday on Iran's military capabilities. While not an overwhelming military force, Iran has enough tools to make things very difficult, and a lot of it seems to be Russian made.

According to Iran expert Kenneth Timmerman, Iran has a number of Russian-built Kilo-class submarines and Chinese-built Huodong missile boats equipped with advanced radar-guided, sea-skimming cruise missiles with a 60-mile range, which many U.S. analysts feel there is no effective defense against.

Another option available to Iran is the EM-53 bottom-tethered mine, which uses a rocket-propelled charge that can hit a ship's hull at a speed of 70 miles per hour.

And then there are the Shahab-3 and Shahab-4 missiles that can carry biological, chemical and, yes, nuclear warheads as far as Tel Aviv. We're pretty sure they don't have nuclear warheads quite yet, but who wants to bet on the other two?

Iran recently purchased $700 million worth of mobile Tor-M1 (SA-15) short-range surface-to-air missiles and is negotiating a deal for longer-range SA-10s as part of a nationwide air defense system designed to prevent a repeat of Israel's 1981 strike against Iraq's French-built Osirak reactor.

Iran is no military behemoth, but they are starting to acquire the capability to hold off a bigger military with an inferior force. I believe the one area in which they are still hopelessly weak is in air power, with something like 200 U.S. made aircraft that are approaching 40 years old. Even there they are compensating with SAM batteries. The longer the world tries to wait out Iran, the uglier things will ultimately become. Hope would seem to pivot on Iran melting down internally before they choose to use any of their weapons systems.

Additional
On cue, IBD writes about the potential for economic meltdown in Iran.