FUTURE BUREAUCRAT

If you read the news you’ve surely heard the drumbeat. It’s a steady drip now. Almost a daily dose.

Depressing, really.

Say what you want about the conduct of the Bush administration and its foreign policy, but (and I’ve said it before) you must recognize their intelligence and political skill. They’re down now, but not out. These are brilliant, motivated people. So as they turn up the heat on the Iranians in the hopes that Ahmadinejad does something stupid, and provides them with the casus bellum they seek, remeber the following: this war will not start in the same way the Iraq war began.

There will be no dramatic UN presentations and no faux Security Council resolutions. There will not be a slow buildup of troops in the region followed by a public warning to the population. US forces will never roll across the Iranian border in large tank formations. The Bush administration understands that the world has changed since 2002. No matter the threat presenting itself in Iran and no matter how good the intelligence, there is no way the administration can undertake another Iraq-style regime change without the backing of the UN.

Assuming the administration wants to take out Iran and/or damage it’s nuclear capabilities, they are left with two options: (1) allow the Israelis to attack Iran with our implicit support, or (2) using Iraq as a wedge, ratchet up the tension to the point where any spark will provide the justification needed for an attack.

Option 1 is plain stupid. Only the hardest-core neocons will consider an Israeli attack on Iran a viable option. No, this war - if it begins - will start with a skirmish between proxies in Iraq. On the one side, Iranian-backed militias, including Sadr’s Mahdi Army and perhaps even the Kurdish peshmerga, on the other side, the Iraqi government and coalition forces. Perhaps the spark will be a confrontation between the Mahdi Army and coalition forces, in which Iranian involvement is undisputed. Perhaps the spark will be an incident like the kidnapping of a senior Iranian diplomat in Baghdad on Sunday, which may have been perpretrated by Iraqi intelligence or forces linked to the Defense Ministry.

It’s becoming clear that the Bush administration is planning for an increase in tensions. It’s also clear that the Iranians are preparing for the worst, by stockpiling food and medicine.

Don’t be fooled, however. The Bush administration will not stumble blindly into confrontation with Iran. As the saying goes, where there is smoke there is fire. And when a spark ignites a military conflict between Iran and the United States, you know who lit the match.