Iran’s mullahs must be getting increasingly worried that somebody is about to launch a military strike on their nuclear bomb development facilities or to impose genuinely tough sanctions that will bring their oil exports to a standstill. Such sanctions, if actually enforced, would cripple Iran’s economy and possibly bring on an intolerable level of civil unrest. How else to explain the statement from Gen. Ataollah Salehi, head of Iran’s military forces, in which he warned the United States not to send the USS John C. Stennis and its support vessels back into the Persian Gulf for any reason. “We warn this ship, which is considered a threat to us, not to come back, and we do not repeat our words twice,” Salehi was quoted as saying by the Iranian Students News. We think former U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton was right when he told The Washington Examiner yesterday that “Iran is still trying to intimidate the White House and Europe because of concern over a possible Israeli attack on its nuclear weapons program. The U.S. should disregard the Iranian bluster, and conduct operations in the Gulf region as it deems appropriate.” There is also this fact, noted by former deputy undersecretary of defense Jed Babbin: “It would be an act of war for Iran to interfere with our exercise of freedom of the seas. American ships can, and should, go anywhere international waters are deep enough for them to sail.”