In psychology it is called the stress-relief cycle. In political science it is called enabling an enemy to build himself up a little bit for waging proxy wars. The formulation in the quote is simplistic and ignores the reality of several important psychological as well as political theories. It can also be argued, with sufficient merit, that Iran is being setup to wage a war with Saudi Arabia in a mother of all wars - the conflagration between Shia and Sunni - despite all the protestation of shia-sunni being brothers. That brotherhood was already witnessed for 8 long years between Iran and Iraq where one of the brother's call it the "Sacred Defence". A new version of that could possibly in the works --- for the timing of Sheikh Nimr's execution right on the heels of the JCOPA relief are, I am sure, only a coincidence. Those who subscribe to the "coincidence theory" of history are condemned to be revisited by the same "coincidence". Thank you. Zahir Ebrahim, Project Humanbeingsfirst.org