US ATTACK ON IRAN LESS LIKELY

After his reelection, George W. Bush refused to remove from the table the possibility that the US might attack Iran, and the neoconservatives continued to make their case for doing so. Recent developments, including Uzbekistan’s request that we close an important base, make the attack less likely.

Neoconservatives have been urging substantial air strikes in order to trigger revolts against the Iranian theocracy, which they claimed was a mere house of cards. to next attack Iraq .The neoconservatives have been suggesting that Iranian dissidents would only need a little help in toppling the Iranian radicals. The US would supply that assistance from Azerbaijan, where the Bush administration seems intent on building a base. It just welcomed the "election" of Ilham Aliev, son of the former dictator--who may have been dead two months before the voting.
In January, Seymour Hersh predicted that the US would move against Iran by late summer. Scott Ritter has written that there are signs the preparations for the attack have already begun .No doubt people in the Committee on the Present Danger, administration hawks, and neoconservatives also expected to see an operation underway.

Philip Giraldi, a respected conservative security analyst , has reported that Dick Cheney and the Pentagon have requested a plan for nuclear strikes against Iran to be deployed if there were another 9/11 event. Even the existence of such a plan would set off alarms in the numerous Shiite states that are friends of the US, and this would greatly distress friends of Iran like China. Let’s hope there reports are wrong. But given the administration’s track record and Cheney’s role in ginning up fake intelligence to support the case for invading Iraq, one cannot be certain or sanguine.

Maybe we should welcome the June election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran's new president. Sure, he played a big role in the hostage crisis, but his ascent should disabuse Washington policy-makers of the idea that it would be easy to topple the Iranian regime. His election marks to radical turn, and it is clear that non-westernized Iranians stood behind him. The Iranian regime is not a house of cards and will not collapse easily.

The recent Iran-Iraq pact, difficulties recruiting troops, and unanticipated deterioration of the US military machine are probably all factors in the promoting the abandonment of the Iranian venture This week, for the first time, 51% of the American public sees the Second Iraq War as a mistake. This information, along with other factors, might strengthen the hands of foreign policy realists in Washington and curb the Bushies appetite for adventurism.


This weeks hints that large numbers of troops would be brought home beginning next Spring suggest there has been a shift in policy. The Bush administration is also turning away from references to the "global war on terror." It certainly could not seek a modus vivendi with Iran while using such language. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad is in place in Baghdad and is equipped to begin repair relations with Tehran. Without improvfed relations with Iran, it, will not be able to disentangle ourselves from Iraq while saving face and having some influence on the flow of its oil.