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• Wednesday, December 19, 2007 08:57 PM

  The Next Impossible War

  Blix states flatly: "The most recent U.S. intelligence report now makes war an impossibility."

  This statement is an optimists view of an administration dedicated to pursuit neoconservative goals worldwide, which certainly include U.S. dominance of Iran and the broader region. It also discounts the tremendous influence of Israel on U.S. policy. Israel may hold their own key to start a U.S.-Iran military engagement that is independent of the politics and merits of any U.S. pre-emptive strike on Iran. After the latest NIE was released:

  • President Bush sought to underscore potential future risks noted in the report, and the administration continues to talk up Iran's evil intentions, noting continued work on uranium enrichment and Iran's recent long range missile testing
  • Israel strongly reaffirmed their own intelligence findings warning of Iran's nuclear ambitions, and Israel's Public Security Minister stated that "Something went wrong in the American blueprint for analyzing the severity of the Iranian nuclear threat"
  • Israel has sent an unscheduled intelligence delegation to the United States, and the United States has sent the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to Tel Aviv to review the US position on Iran
  • The recent uranium shipment from Russia to Iran has led Bush to claim that Iran must stop all enrichment activities, introducing a new stricter construct in which Iran's program would be seen as legitimate in U.S. eyes: "If the Iranians accept that [Russian] uranium for a civilian power plant, then there's no need for them to learn how to enrich"
  • Just this week, the White House announced that Bush would be visiting Israel in early January

  U.S. military action against Iran is still possible, and perhaps likely:

  • If Israel's intelligence conclusions drive it to make a pre-emptive strike against Iran, any Iranian counter-strike would allow Bush the opportunity to justify U.S. involvement in the name of protecting Israel from further Iranian retaliation
  • Bush has declared Iran's Revolutionary Guard to be a global terrorist organization. As such, new claims of the Revolutionary Guard involvement in supporting Shia actions in Iraq that harm U.S. military interests could be cause for action against Iran's military
  • Newly discovered evidence against Iran could be used to reopen the case for U.S. action or bolster the legitimacy of U.S. involvement in any conflict between Iran and Israel. Like the runup to the Iraq war, selective use of intelligence or findings of uncertain quality may not be fully known until after action is initiated

  We should not discount the possibility of highly motivated interests making a 2008 war between the US and Iran a reality.

  —bostonMA Read bostonMA's other letters
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