Iran's recent missile tests represented an attempt to make them look tougher (and more capable militarily) than they actually are. The first clue that something was amiss came when experts noticed that one of the Iranian news agency's official photographs had been doctored to suggest that four missiles had been launched on the first round rather than three. Al Kamen of the Washington Post joked that the test verified Iran's mastery of Photoshop. The Iranian PR tactic is akin to the alleged practice of erecting fake "Potemkin villages" to give the Russian Empress Catherine II the impression that all was well in the provinces. More to the point, the whole missile episode is reminiscent of the old Soviet tactic of marching the same missiles in the annual May Day parade more than once to give a sense of a mighty military arsenal that wasn't matched in reality. Only late in the game, near the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, did Western governments acknowledge that they had drastically overestimated Soviet military power, at a cost of hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars. So it may be with Iran, unless cooler heads prevail.

The second key fact about the tests is that they were not new models, but what my colleague Jeffrey Lewis has described as the "same old boring Shahab 3" that Iran has possessed for some time.

All of which goes to suggest that before the United States goes forward with an enormously expensive plan to site a missile defense system in Poland (political conditions permitting) and the Czech Republic, it would make sense to do a sober analysis of what Iran's capabilities (and intentions) really are. As James Rubin suggests in today's New York Times, "after seven years of refusing to engage in direct, unconditional talks with Iran, the White House has achieved almost nothing." Rather than seeking a technical fix to a threat that has yet to emerge, the next administration should start with negotiations, not the tough talk and sabre-rattling that have achieved so little during the Bush administration.