Whoa boy. Iran again? Again?? AGAIN??

Yep. They’re at it for the — shoot, we can’t even add up what number time it is. We’ll all agree it’s up there, yeah?

According to unnamed officials in the Pentagon, the Iranian military told them they were going to shoot down, out of the sky, two U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft on Saturday while they soared over international waters, the Strait of Hormuz.

This from Military Times:

The aircraft, reportedly a P-8 Poseidon with a crew of nine and an EP-3 Eres with a crew of 24, were flying “routine patrols” when an Iranian air defense station contacted them using ground-to-air radio communications, Navy officials said.

The Iranians told the pilots that they were flying “near Iranian airspace, and if they did not change course immediately ‘we will fire Iranian missile,’” according to a statement from U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain.

The Iranian air defense station made the threats in three separate radio calls.

Interestingly enough, while American defense officials admitted publicly that the threats were “unprofessional”, they also added the following reassuring caveat: the operators of the U.S.-led coalition aircraft knew that the tough talk was a bluff, because they were well out of range of Iran’s surface-to-air weaponry.

It’s like being in a card game and saying you have pocket aces when you already folded.

Still, it’s not a promising sign that the volatile Middle Eastern power is directing such danger toward America — verbal or otherwise.