There was a hilarious cold war spoof of a movie titled "The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!" about a Soviet sub that ran aground off a small New England village. The resulting hijainks by Soviet sailors and townspeople made for some classic comedy.

Yes, it was a liberal caricature of anti-communism - but how could it not be funny with Jonathan Winters playing a lead role?

The movie popped into my head when the Iranian government announced that a small fleet from their navy will patrol off the US east coast this month.

Washington Times:

A senior Iranian naval commander says his country has sent several warships to the Atlantic Ocean, close to U.S. maritime borders for the first time.

The commander of Iran's Northern Navy Fleet, Admiral Afshin Rezayee Haddad, is quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying Saturday that the vessels have already begun the journey to the Atlantic Ocean via waters near South Africa.

Iranian officials said last month that the fleet consisted of a destroyer and a logistic helicopter carrier, which will be on a three-month mission.

Haddad says the fleet is approaching U.S. maritime borders for the first time. The Islamic Republic considers the move as a response to U.S. naval deployments near its own coastlines. The U.S. Navy's 5th fleet is based in nearby Bahrain.

I bet you didn't even know that the Iranians had a navy. Well, they do, and not surprisingly, it's a joke. The idea that this deployment is in response to two US carrier battle groups deployed in the Persian Gulf is so far off the wall that you wonder if the Iranians should be checking to make sure no one has spiked the water supply with hallucinogens. It's bat guano crazy.

Hence, the parallel with the "Russians are Coming" film. Their little flotilla could be blown out of the water by the Boy Scouts, if we had a mind to. The Iranian's "inordinate fear of America" has caused them to suffer delusions of grandeur in pursuit of their mad goals.