If you pay attention to European news outlets, there is a lot of coverage this morning about video released on Iranian TV of a fairly extensive underground missile base. Perhaps the most shocking thing to me is when I googled it up to look deeper essentially all the coverage is European, virtually zilch from an American outlets. (At least at the time I am writing this – there is a screen capture at the end of the post for the record.)

Obviously propaganda, depending on who is covering it the Iranian military released the video either to misdirect because the nuclear deal is going into effect or to threaten. If you are optimistic about the deal then this looks like Baghdad Bob. If you are a realist it is a demonstration that the Iranian regime has no intention of playing well with others.

As was demonstrated in the first Iraq war, and the closing days of WWII, missiles with conventional warheads are terror weapons, not weapons of war. They are scary, but when it comes to destructive capability there are better ways of doing things. Such is likely the excuse the American media will use for its lack of overnight coverage. But it is a pretty sophisticated operation in that video; if I am Iran I am going to be desperately looking for something to give me more bang for my buck on the ends of those missiles.

The point is Iran is still an aggressive bad actor. That is bad news for the Obama administration – a far more likely explanation for the lack of American coverage. The video is in especially stark contrast to climate change being declared our biggest national security threat in Tuesday’s Dem debate. There are people out there that want to kill us – quickly and violently.

Regardless of what the deal actually accomplishes, and the jury will be out on that for quite a while, this video release makes it abundantly clear that Iran remains defiant and aggressive. That is bad news for this administration. And that means it is inconvenient news for a media that declared the leader of this administration the messiah.

And for the record, here is that screen grab: