"The Iranian Missile Crisis"

Spencer Ackerman has a great post up on the folly of the Bush administration's "aggressive new policy" toward Iran. Money quote:

So let's review administration strategy here. In Iraq, the plan is to escalate the war in order to buy time for Iraqi politics... which is thoroughly dominated, according to U.S. intelligence, by Iran. The best case scenario for us in Iraq is handing Iraq to Iran even more than we already have. At the same time, U.S. military and intelligence assets will go around the country seeking to kill Iranian Revolutionary Guard Forces. (Pop quiz: how many soldiers or intelligence operatives do we have in Iraq who can tell the difference between Arabic and Farsi if they heard it?) Also, we plan to take unspecified "aggressive moves" to roll back Iranian influence around Iran, and, for good measure, confront Iran over its nuclear program on the world stage. And apparently, we think Iran will do nothing, roll over, and decide that conducting foreign policy with a sense of dangerous triumphalism has all been folly, according to [Dafna] Linzer:

Senior administration officials said the policy is based on the theory that Tehran will back down from its nuclear ambitions if the United States hits it hard in Iraq and elsewhere, creating a sense of vulnerability among Iranian leaders.

More likely, Archduke Ferdinand is en route to Sarajevo.

For starters, compare Ackerman's take on all this to Powerline's ridiculous insinuation that military confrontation with Iran is the key to solving our problems in Iraq. First, what part of "our allies in Iraq are also allies of Iran" doesn't Powerline understand? And second, does Powerline actually believe that Iran will simply kneel before us and accede to our demands after we've launched an illegal/unprovoked military first strike against what we think are their nuclear facilities?

Last April the WaPo's David Ignatius quoted Graham Allison as noting that the growing conflict between the U.S. and Iran is turning out to be "the Cuban missile crisis in slow motion." However, what worried Ignatius then (and what worries Ackerman now) was "that the relevant historical analogy may not be the 1962 war that didn't happen, but World War I, which did." The more the Bush adminstration carelessly ratchets up the pressure on Iran, the more likely we are to ignite a conflagration of epic proportions in the Middle East from which America may never recover.

Posted by Kingston