Oh, dear, we've gone and ignored diplomatic protocol...

So true, David. I was thinking the same thing.

And if they could just get folks to buy it, I have this bizarre vision of Iran and Syria issuing a few hundred thousand sets of embassy credentials to heavily armed "diplomats."

Thought the cold war was over? The attack on the US Embassy in Greece is being claimed by a Marxist group. Love that timing, right about the time Russia was issuing their condemnation.

There is a Lebanese saying that the Kurds apparently keep in mind; "Your neighbour is closer than your far away cousin".

The Kurds have to keep in mind their position straddling 4 borders; Iraq, Iran, Syrian and Turkey... There are even a few in Azerbaijan. This is a double-edged sword, which also allow the Kurds to "project" some influence across those borders.

With this in mind, I agree that the Kurds most likely coordinated with the US, since the Iranians in this Irbil where far out of Persia's domain. But they could not "officially" approve of the action, since they still need to keep bridges open. Coming on the heels of some moves around Sadr City, and the recent bombings in Arabstan, this was a clear message for the Persians not to stray too far from their sandbox.

The message reinforces an earlier verbal warning by the Kurdish president. But I do not think the Persians got the message yet.

Who says that the Kurds are that ticked off? According to this report, Kurdish security forces took control of the building after U.S. forces left. Yes, their formal statement condemns the action, but as diplomatic statements go, that one's pretty mild, frankly. Most of the Kurdish statements have emphasized that the U.S. did not give the Kurdish Regional Government advance notice of the raid. That suggests to me that, like most countries around the world, they are happy to blame the U.S. for doing things that they really wanted to happen, but don't want to suffer the consequences for.

Here, the Kurds did ask the Iranians to open this "consulate" (which wasn't officially a consulate yet) to improve some cross-border paperwork hassles. They could hardly support a raid even if the Iranians were using it as a base for assisting anti-American operations. The Kurds are also very sensitive generally about their autonomy. There are strong forces in favor of the declaration of a "Kurdistan", something which just won't happen because of Turkish opposition, so they're sensitive to proper protocols being followed for prior notice of such things.

Contrary to your extraordinarily pessimistic tone, however, that doesn't make this that big a deal to the Kurds. They also don't want their area to become a haven for anti-American operations by Iranian-supported forces. The Kurds actually generally like and support America, and definitely supported the removal of Saddam Hussein from power. They mostly get mad at us when we abandon them, as we have several times over the past few decades, in order to practice some nice realpolitik, which usually involves us looking the other way while our adversaries wreak havoc on innocent people so long as they give us what we want, like keeping the flow of oil going.

P.S. We frown on vulgarity here and work hard to promote a civil tone of debate, so in the future, please refrain from using phrases like "what the hell were you thinking".