In a series of public statements in recent months, President Bush and
members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing
degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran. ...The
President’s position, and its corollary—that, if many of America’s problems in
Iraq are the responsibility of Tehran, then the solution to them is to confront
the Iranians—have taken firm hold in the Administration. This summer, the White
House, pushed by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the
Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran,
according to former officials and government consultants. The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism.
The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.
Since the whole "greeted as Liberators; Iraq becomes the 51st state" scenario has unravelled catastrophically, it's quite clear that the Iranians are the main geopolitical beneficiary of the destruction of the Iraqi Baathist regime and the failure of the US occupation. Entirely predictable, of course, for anybody but Cheney's war-bots. So having totally dicked up Iraq in the unsuccessful pursuit of regional military dominance, administration officials are now looking for a reason to knock Iran down a peg in order to restore what they see as the rightful state of the Universe -- Uncle Sam rules; everybody else drools. But attacking Iran could unleash some serious ugliness, and leave Uncle Sam dazed, wounded and drooling. Not to mention, you know, lots of people killed.
We're already losing two wars in the region, killing boatloads of people (many of them non-combatants), alienating great swaths of the Muslim world, and providing the Islamists with the political credibility they would not otherwise have; and attacking Iran would aggravate all these problems even if it did provide a temporary testosterone infusion to administration officials whose martial prowess has not lived up to their hyper-masculine posturing.
