“Just days before Christmas, as Congress was hurrying to wind up business so members could travel home to spend the holidays with their families, sailors on board a tramp steamer registered under a Liberian flag of convenience swung open the metal doors to the cargo hold and activated a winch.

“They were just north of Baltimore — one of hundreds of ships plying the crowded maritime corridor off the east coast of the United States. As their giant cargo rose up onto the deck, the sailors stripped away the tarpaulins, revealing a long, low-slung, eight-wheeled vehicle with a distinctive, bug-eyed cab.

“Initially produced in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the MAZ-543 tractor-erector-launcher (TEL) was exported widely around the world to launch the SCUD missiles so popular in places such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Libya….”

[From the epilogue of Ken Timmerman’s extremely scary book, COUNTDOWN TO CRISIS — THE COMING NUCLEAR SHOWDOWN WITH IRAN.]