“In a program long aimed at regime change (but officially focused on the country’s nuclear program), the U.S. has clamped energy sanctions — often seen as an act of war — on Iran, supported a special operations campaign of unknown proportions (including cross-border actions), run a massive CIA drone surveillance program in the country’s skies, and (with the Israelis) loosedat least two major malware “worms” against the computer systems and centrifuges of its nuclear facilities, which even the Pentagon defines as acts of war. It has also backed a massive build-up of U.S. naval and air power in the Persian Gulf and of military bases in countries on Iran’s peripheries, along with “comprehensive multi-option war-planning” for a possible 2013 strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities. (Though little is known about it, an assassination campaign against Iranian nuclear scientists has usually been blamed on the Israelis. Now that the joint U.S.-Israeli authorship of acts of cyberwar against Iran has been confirmed, however, it is at least reasonable to wonder whether the U.S. might also have had a hand in these killings.) All of this has embroiled the region and brought it to the edge of yet more war, while in no obvious way shaking the Iranian regime.”