Out partner in patty-cake - todays edition

The latest utterance from the regime to which we have extended the outstretched hand, to which we've extended an invitation to join the "international community," with which we have move the goalpost in the ongoing "negotiations" over its ability to amass a nuclear arsenal to the point where we're no longer taking about getting rid of all centrifuges:

senior Iranian cleric with close ties to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed on Friday that "we will raise the flag of Islam over the White House" in response to the killing of Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guards operatives on the Golan Heights last month.

According to foreign media, Israeli attack helicopters killed six Hezbollah terrorists along with six Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) operatives, including a high-ranking general. 

Among the Hezbollah operatives killed in the strike was Jihad Mougniyeh, the son of Hezbollah's former military leader, Imad Moughniyeh, who according to Western intelligence sources, was in the midst of setting up a terrorism base on the Syrian Golan and plotting rocket attacks, bombings, anti-tank missile strikes, and cross-border infiltrations against Israel.

The cleric, Ali Shirazi, made the remarks to the official Revolutionary Guards web site. His comments were reported by the Saudi-owned news network Al Arabiya.

"The resistance front led by Iran would retaliate from the global arrogance of killing [Iranian officers] and Hezbollah men" on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, Shirazi said during a ceremony honoring Iranian soldiers who died in Syria and Iraq.

A qestion for the cleric:  Why, exactly, were those Revolutionary Guards operatives lurking around the Golan Heights?

And now a question for Secretary Global-Test:  Do you take this attitude into consideration when you sit down with these goons?

senior Iranian official on Thursday threatened to “wipe Tel Aviv and Haifa off the map” in the event of an Israeli attack on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear installations.

General Mustafa Yazdi, the assistant chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, warned that “Iran will flatten Tel Aviv and Haifa if Israel perpetrates an attack on our country.”

The Lebanese television station Al Mayadeen, which is affiliated with the Shi’ite Hezbollah movement, aired footage of the general’s remarks, which came on the heels of “the threats made by Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman.”

This is not the first time that senior Iranian officials have threatened to “erase Tel Aviv.” Earlier this week, Mujtaba A-Nur, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said that Iran “will erase Tel Aviv in 10 minutes if Israel dares attack Iran.”

“If the Zionist regime attacks us, our missiles will reach Tel Aviv within six, seven minutes, and they will destroy it before the dust and the smoke of their missiles reach us,” he said.

Secretary Global-Test, surely your narcissistic sense of yourself as a visionary being able to melt the hearts of the most hardened enemies with your grand vision of a tofu-and-sprouts, unicorns-and-rainbows world is not so overwhelming that you lose all sight of who it is your dealing with.  Is it?