Like many people, I find it extremely difficult to believe that President Bush could actually do anything so crazy as to launch a military attack against Iran, and that even if he wanted to, the Congress, the Pentagon, and the American public would ever countenance such action.
The problem is that today the downside risks of attacking Iran seem even more horrendous ---- and yet? It makes me nervous when my president truly believes he is carrying out the will of God. So this is why I reluctantly believe today that Bush will indeed launch an attack on Iran before the expiration of his term of office:
1. As expected, Iran has offered to enter negotiations, but has rejected the precondition that they discontinue uranium enrichment. Iran will continue to stall indefinitely in the expectation that the U.S. cannot summon the international political and economic clout to damage Iran to any critical degree in the near future.
2. The U.S. will fail to get the UNSC to establish (and then enforce) a regimen of sanctions that Washington considers tough enough --- despite the unanimous concern of the larger powers, including China and Russia, that a nuclear Iran would be undesirable.
3. Whatever sanctions are eventually applied will have zero chance of persuading Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions; most certain is the fact that Iran will continue its development program without any slowdown until it has passed the US-Israel "red line" of possessing the necessary raw material to produce a nuclear bomb whenever it chooses to do so.
full article
http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/08/why_bush_will_c.html#moreRay Close is a former CIA analyst in the Near East division. He is a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.