From what I understand, Iran has a good, or at least decent, transit system, (they aren't a third world country) and a decent communication grid

Iran was, by the very definition of the term, a third world country. Not that the term has any meaning, any more, as the Soviet Bloc, the second world, no longer exists.

So why only military sonar? Couldn't this happen even with regular sonar?

not a lot of high powered sonar use in the civilian world, i would guess.

Don't hard drives decay quickly if unused?/blockquote of course not, unless they are Seagates.

On the other hand, I'm just so scared of the consequences: we are playing with nature and past experience shows that we usually don't fully understand the long-term consequences of our actions. We usually regret such experiments.

nature played with us first, it's only fair that we reciprocate.

I still believe iPhone is all marketing, the product itself is just average. But that's only my opinion...

have you used or owned one? as an owner of an iPhone 3G, and having used many other smartphones on the marked, i'd have to say that ya-ya-ya-ya-you're on crack.