If the contact was made only yesterday through Kurdish contacts chances are we are reading this before the Iranian leadership. Yet who exactly this is aimed at is not clear as the idea of an ‘Iranian Leadership’ is in itself vague as are we referring to the politicians or the religious leaders?

Further, if you would like to think of the Iraq war as little more then an attempted ‘oil grab’, then It does not make much sense to do anything with Iran now. Yes, always good to have a little war to divert public attention for the ineptitude of national politicians and domestic crisis’s (fears of resecession and so on) while President Bush has nothing to lose. But the threat of conflict has driven prices to $125 a barrel, imagine the economic consequences of actual conflict.

No, I believe ‘balance of power’ in the region using proxy states/groups is what lies ahead. Then again, being pragmatic does not win elections.

Back in 05-06, the cries for war against Iran were following almost the exact same playbook that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq. Scarily so. But there ended up being a huge amount of pushback (including publicied rumors of internal pushback in the military).

It did seem to settle down for a while, but the same drums are beating AGAIN, so thus I think its right to worry again: with the current administration, you can’t count on them not doing something incredibly stupid, especially with an election approaching.

They have beat the war-drums in this way twice: Once got us into Iraq. So when you hear them beating the war-drums again, its right to worry.

As for the second listed warning, this ties into some of the reports of immediately after Sept 11 there was a movement to attack Iraq even when it was clear that the problems lay in Afghanistan, so it unfortunatly also fits with the preestablished MO of the current administration.

On the other hand, I’d hope that we have standard contingency plans for everything, including invading Canada to secure our supply of maple syrup, which I’m sure the press would be happy to misconstrew.

A small clique with an ideological perspective that thinks it is necessary for Middle East peace. This group is much more prominent outside the administration than in it, and actually consists of people who the administration never hired or encouraged to find other pursuits in the private sector

Those whose ideological orientation requires them to believe the administration will order and attack on Iran in the next ten minutes.

These groups play on and feed each other.

But assuming Iran does not do something in Iraq that can’t be ignored, I rather doubt it. Military deployments are not right and there does not appear to be a move in that direction. It would unbelievably complicate Iraq. Action does not need to be done soon. Any threat is a bigger threat to Europe than the US. If Europe is not willing to fly the first wave the US will wait.

Could be wrong but there is more hype pro and con than substance.