First, Iran elects a president whose sense of style begins and ends at Members Only jackets. Then, some operative tries to hire a to assassinate a Saudi Arabian ambassador in the United States. And now Iran's attempt to put a monkey in space failed.

Iran had planned to launch a monkey 75 miles up for a 20-minute ride, and apparently the Kavoshgar-5 rocket did take off a few weeks back. However, "the launch was not publicised as all of its anticipated objectives were not accomplished," an Iranian spokesman said, which is codespeak for "oops, our bad, sorry monkey."

Western experts worry that Iran is only playing with astroprimates as a prelude for putting weapons on long-range rockets, which we expect to happen right around the time Mahmoud Ahmadinejad allows dubbed copies of "Jersey Shore" on Iranian TV.