I don't think that time is "on our side" where Iraq and Iran are concerned:

From The Washington Note:

Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.

This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument.

The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).

This strategy would sidestep controversies over bomber aircraft and overflight rights over other Middle East nations and could be expected to trigger a sufficient Iranian counter-strike against US forces in the Gulf -- which just became significantly larger -- as to compel Bush to forgo the diplomatic track that the administration realists are advocating and engage in another war.

. . .

The zinger of this information is the admission by this Cheney aide that Cheney himself is frustrated with President Bush and believes, much like Richard Perle, that Bush is making a disastrous mistake by aligning himself with the policy course that Condoleezza Rice, Bob Gates, Michael Hayden and McConnell have sculpted.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/002145.php

Again, we are being provided with information, just as we were prior to the invasion on Iraq, that demands our attention. Maybe this time we can stop another war before it starts.

I cannot begin to imagine the repercussions of an armed conflict with Iran. They are 75 million people. The entire Middle East will go up in flames.

I don't know what Israel will or won't do. I do know what the U.S. is capable of:

anything.

I see so many parallels between the current warmongering towards Iran and the previous lead-up to the war in Iraq. We are engaged in black ops against Iran right this minute. If someone did that to us, it would be considered an act of war. We have an entire battle fleet, including two aircraft carriers, parked off the Iranian border in the Gulf.

We are picking a fight.

No one should doubt that Iran intends to acquire nuclear weapons. They would be crazy if they didn't, given what happened to Iraq and what didn't happen to North Korea. Be that as it may, even Scott Ritter agrees that Iran should not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

But we also know it isn't always about the nuclear weapons. Pakistan, for example, has a nuclear arsenal including delivery systems and is a much greater terrorist threat than Iran, (They were a major supplier of equipment to North Korea in the development of it's nuclear capabilities. And Pakistan has been a haven for terrorists for years. They harbored Al-Qaeda and continue to do so even now), but we're not after Pakistan.

I really think oil does have lot to do with it. If you look at the major oil producers in the region and you look at the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, you see that Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran are the three countries surrounding the Gulf. If we control those countries, we will control the flow of MidEast oil to the rest of the world for the foreseeable future.

Cheney is not about freedom. Cheney is about oil. And it's not just U.S. oil companies that needs the oil. It's all of corporate America. It's the difference between global hegemony and being just one participant in a world of nations.

One thing that has baffled me completely is the placement of a U.S. battle fleet within striking distance of Iran's missles. Iran has a standing military and state-of-the-art anti-ship cruise missiles such as the Exocet (French) and the SS-N-22 Sunburn (Russia) just as Saudi Arabia and Israel have similar technology available from the U.S.

Why would the U.S. place such high value targets in the middle of a big lake such as the Persian Gulf with only at tiny exit at one end (the Strait of Hormuz) if by doing so they stood at risk of losing those ships and thousands of American military within minutes of a military attack upon Iran? Why would the American military do this when they could move the ships out to ocean and still have the ability to bomb Iran into rubble?

Because we're picking a fight, that's why.

I believe the neocons, led by Cheney, have every intent of forcing a military conflict with Iran. They are operating under the model of "do what you want and ask permission later." It has worked for them so far.

Once the U.S. is involved in a military aggression against Iraq, every American will have to shut up immediately and not question a single thing the president does from that point on, because it really will mean that we will have terrorists attacking America and Western European countries with the intent of killing as many civilians as possible. And it will mean that at any moment the conflict could escalate into a nuclear exchange between opposing military forces.

There will be no coming back from that one. Any attack on Iran that results in a strong reprisal by Iran against American forces will give us the WWIII the neocons so love to talk about.