The voices are growing deeper with foreboding, the eyes across the Atlantic are narrowing and the language is getting vaguer by the day. The target is Iran, the time frame is unknown, but the plan is in place. All rockets point towards Iran, and the real reasons are again being fudged among the mists of hubris and fantasy. It started with the announcement of the axis of terror by the Bush administration many years ago. Since that day there have been countless stories of unproven nuclear weapons developments, support of terrorism and blantantly mistranslated speeches by the president, Mr Ahmedinajad. It was reported he had claimed to want to wiping off of the map of Israel, this was not the case. He wanted Zionism as a concept to be irradicated, not Israeli people. In the same way that the end of Communism in the old Soviet Union did not mean the mass extermination of Russians.
What is happening in Iran is an example of an oil rich country trying to raise its profile with a populist agenda with a view to becoming an important player on the world stage. Granted there are countless human rights abuses, much like there was in Iraq, and are in Burma, Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea but the latter three have nothing mineral based to gain from imposing regime change. However the freedom of the Iranian people while far from perfect is far far more advanced than Saudi Arabia who lead the world in freedom stealing. It just happens that Saudi Arabia's royal family is little more than a puppet government of the US in the region, and thus unthreatenable.
The best case scenario is a George Bush not being tempted in to a final “double or quits” strike at the end of his term to make his legacy seem anything less than a disaster. There is even more chance of an armed strike if the Gallup poles suggest a Democratic victory at the next election in Washington. Bush has nothing to lose, and if it goes wrong and the Democrats are in, it becomes their fault. So international failure becomes US domestic policy faults. The likely scenario is such a strike, but there is a worst case scenario not yet contemplated.
A revitalised Russia is not taking kindly to the US throwing around its weight in the middle east which Putin considers his back yard. China too, who have historic links with Iran through oil and weapons sales are not wont to be ordered around by Washington, even less so due to the Dalai Lama being given the congressional medal by Bush which Beijing sees as an affront to itself. Three potentially trigger happy nuclear powers fighting over a country for whatever the reasons is not a palatable situation for anybody.
