Washington. (CNSNews.com) - There is a danger that Iran may miscalculate the likelihood of a U.S. response as it taunts U.S forces in the Persian Gulf, experts on the Middle East said Monday at a conference held by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, D.C.

Noting that Iran threatened the U.S. Navy in international waters earlier this year, and that it continues to provide weapons and fighters to U.S. enemies in Iraq, Kenneth Katzman of the Congressional Research Service compared the U.S. to a great white shark, and said Iran is now in danger of being "the one who teased the great shark one too many times."

"They are taunting the shark, trying to show they are not scared and they have been quite effective at that," Katzman, a specialist in Middle Eastern affairs, said. "But eventually the Great White Shark might bite you. I think Iranian strategists need to be concerned that they might be taunting the shark a little bit too much."

Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at AEI, said the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is showing signs of succumbing to the dangers of overconfidence.

"My biggest fear is that they will miscalculate, perhaps as Hezbollah did with the Israelis in 2006, and it will amplify into a larger dispute," he said.

Rubin said this overconfidence could quickly lead to a conflict.

"On the part of the Revolutionary Guard one of the greatest dangers that exists is the constant taunting," he said. "This suggests that the Iranians are testing the red line. They are not certain that that red line for us really is a red line that is set in stone."

Rubin was referring to incidents early this year in which Iranian watercraft appeared to threaten U.S. military vessels.

-- On Jan. 6, five Iranian speedboats made threatening maneuvers near three U.S. Navy ships in the Straits of Hormuz, which is where the Persian Gulf connects to the Gulf of Oman

-- On April 25, a ship contracted by the U.S. military fired warning shots towards two Iranian boats which, according to U.S. officials present at the incident, identified themselves as Iranian coast guard vessels.

Moreover, Katzman said he thinks that American reports of Iranian involvement in the Iraq war, as outlined to Congress by former U.S. Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus, are credible and serious.
\ul
\ulnone"I have no reason to doubt the evidence that the U.S. military has presented showing most of the 170 millimeter rockets that are fired into the Green Zone -- at the rate of approximately 15 a day -- are indeed manufactured in Iran," he said.

Katzman added: "I have no reason to doubt General Petraeus' assertion that Iran is using Hezbollah operatives to train and direct special groups of Mahdi offshoot fighters."

Rubin went on to say that he believes allowing the Iranians to push the red line is amplifying the possibility that an armed conflict will occur.
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\ulnone"I don't believe in the reticence on the part of some in Washington or that soft rhetoric is a smart move if one wants to involve kinetic action," he said.

"The greatest danger would be to stumble into some sort of conflict. The best way to defend against such an unattended conflict is to make the red lines as clear as possible. That will enable better diplomacy to work just as soon as there is an understanding of where the point of no return is."

The experts discussed the threat of Iran in a panel titled, "The Transformation and Rise of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps."

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