Hold your breath

TEHRAN, Feb. 7 Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps began two days of air and naval military exercises Wednesday in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman.

The naval exercise was named Thunder, while the air operation was named Thunderbolt, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.

The military said both operations focus on defensive and operational capabilities, the Alalam TV network reported. Last month, the military conducted five days of ground exercises to test its missile abilities, and last year, Iran also held three large-scale military exercises involving ballistic missile tests, the FARS news agency reported.

Copyright 2007 by UPI

Update: Think Progress:

“Everything the advocates of war said would happen hasn’t happened,” says the president of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, an influential conservative who backed the Iraq invasion. “And all the things the critics said would happen have happened. [The president’s neoconservative advisers] are effectively saying, ‘Invade Iran. Then everyone will see how smart we are.’

Update: Senator Jim Webb speaks directly to the Bush administration:

Tonight on Hardball, Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) said that during his time as Navy Secretary under President Reagan — and “until very recently” — the U.S. “never operated” aircraft carriers within the Gulf because it risked confrontation. “The chance of accidentally bumping into something that would start a diplomatic situation was pretty high,” Webb explained. “With the tensions as high as they are, I’m very worried that we might accidentally set something off in there and we need, as a Congress, to get ahead of the ballgame here.”