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.

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