Today’s New York Times reports:

TEHRAN — Iran warned Monday that it could easily close a critical Persian Gulf waterway for oil shipments and claimed possession of a new long-range naval weapon that could sink enemy ships nearly 200 miles away.

It was unclear what provoked the warning, made by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, but it followed the weekend expiration of an informal deadline for Iran to respond to incentives from world powers to curb its uranium enrichment activities. The United States, which has warships deployed in the Persian Gulf, has said new sanctions should be imposed on Iran for failing to respond to the deadline…

General Jafari gave no details about the type of naval weapon involved in the recent test, but he said it was Iranian-built and “unique in the world.”

He said it would have the range to reach enemy warships in the Persian Gulf, an apparent reference to United States warships which have been conducting naval maneuvers in the Gulf …

The Bush administration has refused to rule out a military option, and in June Israel’s air force rehearsed what American intelligence officials described as a possible strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Is it really that “unclear what provoked the warning?”  Could it have anything to do with recent reports of Bush Administration attempts to artificially concoct a casus belli by staging an incident between US Naval forces and Navy SEALs disguised as Iranian PT boats?  Or years of reports of illegal covert operations within Iranian territory?  Maybe Israeli war games as mentioned above?  Or maybe the fact that US officials have repeatedly and openly called for bombing Tehran, warning that “all options are on the table” (read: nukes), and that we wouldn’t hesitate to “obliterate” them given proper provocation?

The presupposition here is that the United States owns the world.  We have the right to deploy naval forces and conduct maneuvers off the coast of a sovereign nation we are openly hostile to.  We have the right, along with the other Western powers, to dictate ad hoc the terms of international relations, excluding ourselves of course from those same standards.  If we feel it necessary to deploy a second aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf, by definition it is a defensive “reminder,” not an “escalation.”  Any attempt by Iran to defend itself or to pose any deterrent to potential US and Israeli attacks is by definition aggression.