Iraq is clearly a disaster from a humanitarian perspective, as well as on the military front. Iraq is also becoming a political disaster for Republicans in the U.S. Not only do Republicans face losing control of Congress, but with President Bush's approval ratings in the toilet, Republicans may well lose the White House too. The lesson of the staged 9/11 and the ensuing war in Iraq is clear: Americans will rally around the president and his party during distressing times. What could be more opportune for this president and his party than another staged 9/11-like event, followed by another war of retaliation, this time against Iran ?

I don't believe another fake 9/11 is actually necessary for the president to launch another war in the Middle East. Just when I was beginning to think that the precipitously declining support - down to about one third of the public - for the war in Iraq was an indication that Americans were wising up, recent polls suggest that more than half of Americans support a new war against Iran! How can they favor starting a new war even as their support for the last one is declining? I was baffled by this inconsistency until I realized that the declining support for the war in Iraq is not a rejection of war, but a rejection of losing wars. Americans are perfectly fond of war as long as they're winning. In any case, there seems to be ample support from the American public for a new war against Iran. Another fake 9/11 attack is not necessary, though it may occur anyway in order to further the totalitarian ambitions of the government.

Withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq is out of the question. Such an action would be tantamount to an admission of defeat by this administration, an admission that will never be forthcoming. Besides, the U.S. expended great effort and resources to go into Iraq and build permanent military bases there. It is simply not going to leave for at least a few decades. Maintaining the status quo in Iraq is also untenable, as the voices calling for withdrawal intensify with each passing day. That leaves only one avenue of action to this administration: escalation.

A new war against Iran would divert attention from Iraq and firm up public support for the president and his party, as will be evidenced by renewed passion for red-white-and-blue and yellow magnetic ribbons.

Another good reason for a war against Iran is to divert attention from the economy. It's obvious now that the U.S. housing bubble is deflating. It may continue to deflate gradually or it might snowball with spectacular consequences, it's anybody's guess. How it plays out is largely subject to people's perceptions. People are still fairly optimistic about the economy, so perhaps that's why the housing bubble is deflating slowly right now. But that could change. In any event, with the housing bubble being the driving force behind consumer spending of late, and with consumer spending driving the economy, as the housing bubble deflates, consumer spending will go down. An imminent decline in consumer spending, coupled with other indicators, such as converging bond yields, hint at a recession late this year. A new war would be a great diversion from economic woes and afford the government a chance to pump "liquidity" into the economy. The U.S. Government recently discontinued reporting the broadest measure of the money supply, M3, perhaps in order to hide future liquidity injections.

Getting back to the master plan. Many have pointed out that attacking Iran does not stand up to a cost-benefit analysis. They argue that attacking Iran would cause Iran to retaliate by stoking the insurgency in Iraq and threatening oil shipments through the Persian Gulf. The implication is that the U.S. will not risk the lives of its soldiers in Iraq or risk soaring oil prices, all for the sake of imposing its political will on Iran . They argue that not even this administration is that irrational.

These people are missing the point, however. The single-minded goal of the United States in the Middle East is control of the oil, regardless of the cost. Let's examine the potential costs more closely. Would the U.S. endanger its soldiers in Iraq ? Absolutely. Just look at Pearl Harbor during World War II. The U.S. Government unquestionably knew the Japanese were going to attack and deliberately let it happen. The U.S. Government probably even abetted the attack by clearing an unobstructed flight path for the Japanese attackers. So would they sacrifice a few thousand more soldiers in Iraq? Sure. What if Iran manages to slow or stop the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf ? Again, that could work to the advantage of the U.S., as I will explain below. In the meantime, who would benefit from reduced global oil supplies? Oil companies. As oil has gone up in price during the last few years, the profits of oil companies have skyrocketed into the tens of billions of dollars per year, for each company. We also witnessed this administration look the other way when energy companies rapaciously exploited California's nascent "deregulated" electricity market, so we know where its allegiance lies.

Another "rational" argument against attacking Iran is that the U.S., by virtue of its constrained manpower, can only feasibly attack Iran by air, which would not be very effective if limited to "military" targets. This is true, but it misses the point. The initial air assault against Iran would be merely the first step in what the U.S. probably hopes will become a larger war. Why? Because the only way the United States can successfully neutralize Iran is by dropping a couple of nuclear bombs on its civilian population, forcing Iran to surrender unconditionally.

Even the U.S. will not dare to unilaterally break sixty years of nuclear taboo and drop a nuclear bomb on an Iranian city. However, it probably can get away with using "tactical nuclear bunker buster" bombs against ostensibly military targets. The world will be outraged, of course. But after a few months of media spin, the U.S. will probably quell the opprobrium.

n the meantime, Iran will foment Shiite insurrection in Iraq, resulting in a dramatic increase in casualties among American soldiers. Iran can also sink a few U.S. warships and oil tankers in the Persian Gulf , and indeed slow or stop the flow of oil through the gulf. Of course, the U.S. will spin this Iranian retaliation as a reckless and fanatical escalation of the war. Americans, angry at seeing their soldiers killed and their warships sunk, will rally even more fervently around their president. The U.S. Government will point to the world's growing economic problems ensuing from the shortage of oil as evidence that Iran needs to be stopped, whatever the cost. The world's industrialized nations that are so dependent on oil will publicly renounce taking harsher action against Iran while privately hoping that the U.S. does whatever it takes to get the oil flowing again.

Then, without warning, the U.S. will drop a couple of nuclear bombs on a couple of medium sized cities in Iran, just like it did in Japan sixty years ago. The justifications will be the same as before: to bring a speedy end to the war. Of course, the world will be outraged, but its reaction will be muted because the U.S. will have already broken the nuclear taboo when it used the "bunker busters," and besides, what can the world really do about it? Iran will surrender, and the U.S. will be fully in control of the Middle East and two of its most important sources of oil: Iraq and Iran .

The U.S. can then withdraw its soldiers in Iraq into its new massive, city-sized military bases and wait out the civil war, while keeping a close eye on the oil. The U.S. will be a pariah nation, but so what. It will control the bulk of the world's oil.

De Borchgrave writes in an amused vein, "So we looked up B-2s. The US Air Force only has 21 of them. Perhaps price had something to do with it. They came in at $2.2 billion a copy. But they can carry enough ordnance to make Iranians nostalgic for the Shah and his role as the free world's gendarme in charge of the West's oil supplies in the Gulf. These stealthy bombers have one major drawback in the Persian magic carpet mode. They can only attack 16 targets simultaneously; one short of the 17 underground nuclear facilities pinned red on Mossad's target-rich PowerPoint presentations to the political leadership. Presumably, that's why two B-2s would be required."

De Borchgrave points out that most of Iran's secret nuclear installations are not only underground, but also close to population centres. "The first pictures of a B-2 raid would be dead women and children on al-Jazeera television newscasts, now as globally ubiquitous as CNN and FOX. The collateral damage would then rival Abu Ghraib's devastating impact on America's good name. The perceived American indifference over the loss of Arab lives would now be seen as spreading to another Muslim country," he writes. The neo-con informant told the correspondent that there is "absolutely no way" Bush will accommodate to an Iranian nuke or two, the way he blinked first with North Korea. Bush uncompromising view of the Iranian nuclear danger and his determination to prevent it by force of two B-2s if necessary is "as solid as his resolve to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein," he said.

According to de Borchgrave, "This is also the British assessment of Bush's intentions against Iran, a power whose president has vowed to wipe Israel off the map. Today (April 3, 2006), senior British officials met with defence and intelligence chiefs to assess the consequences of air strikes against Iran - as well as European and global repercussions. Neo-cons are unfazed by the fact that Iran is an ancient civilisation of 70 million people with retaliatory assets that range from a choke-hold on the world's most important oil route in the Strait of Hormuz, to an anti-US Shiite coalition in Iraq with two private militias, funded and armed by Iran, to terrorist groups throughout the Middle East that have a global reach. Iran is also a power that not only resisted an Iraqi invasion, but fought Saddam Hussein's legions to a standstill in an eight-year-war of attrition that killed about 1 million soldiers on both sides. If, as Bush has indicated, US troops were still in Iraq in 2009 under the next president, Tehran, in retaliatory animus, would pull out all the stops to ensure a Vietnam-like send-off for remaining US forces in Iraq. For the time being, Tehran is delighted to keep US troops in Iraq as protective cover for Iran as it consolidates its influence throughout 60 percent of the country."

It certainly isn't blameless. First, its nuclear arming would deal a major blow to an already fraying international non-proliferation regime. Second, it would involve a huge deceit. Third, the US divides actual or potential nuclear powers into responsible and irresponsible ones. Iran would be irresponsible, being already the worst of "rogue states".

Typically, a "rogue state", as well as being oppressive, ideologically repugnant and anti-American, unites an aggressive nature with disproportionate military strength, thereby posing a constant, exceptional threat to an established regional order. What could now more emphatically consign Iran to such company than its new president, with his calls to "wipe Israel off the map"?

Yet, in nuclear terms in the Middle East, Israel is the original sinner. Non- proliferation must be universal: if, in any zone of potential conflict, one party goes nuclear, its adversaries can't be expected not to. No matter how long ago it was, by violating that principle Israel would always bear a responsibility for whatever happened later. Second, its deceit was no less than Iran's, though, there being no non-proliferation treaty at the time, it was only the US it deceived. Mindful of what Israel's mendacity portended, the CIA warned in 1963 that, by enhancing its sense of security, nuclear capacity would make Israel less, not more, conciliatory to the Arabs; it would exploit its new "psychological advantages" to "intimidate" them.

Which, thirdly, points to the irresponsible use Israel has indeed made of it. Sure, it always justified it as its "Samson option", its last recourse against neighbours bent on destroying it. There is no such threat now; but if there was once, or will be again, the question is why.

A major part of the answer is that on most counts except hostility to the US Israel has always behaved like a "rogue state". It came into being as a massive disrupter of the established Middle East order, through violence and ethnic cleansing. Such a settler-state could only achieve true legitimacy, true integration into a still-to-be-completed new order, by restoring the Palestinian rights it violated in its creation and growth.

That, at bottom, is what the everlasting "peace process" is about. The world has a broad definition of the settlement lying at the end of it. It doesn't involve the full emancipation of an indigenous people that has been the norm in European decolonisation; only a compromise vastly more onerous for the defeated Palestinians than the Israelis.

But settlement never comes, because Israel resists even that compromise. Its nuclear power, on top of its already overwhelming conventional superiority, ensures that. Such irresponsible use of it is what Shimon Peres was alluding to when he said that "acquiring a superior weapons system would mean the possibility of using it for compellent purposes - that is, forcing the other side to accept Israeli political demands". Or what Moshe Sneh, a leading Israeli strategist, meant when he said: "I don't want the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to be held under the shadow of an Iranian nuclear bomb." As if the Arabs haven't had to negotiate under the shadow of an Israeli bomb these past four decades.

There are three ways the crisis can go. The first is that Israel insists on, and achieves, the unchallenged perpetuation of its "original sin". For it isn't so much "the world", as President Bush keeps saying, that finds a nuclear Iran so intolerable, but the world on Israel's behalf; not the risk that Iran will attack Israel that makes the crisis so dangerous, but that Israel will attack Iran - or that the US will take on the job itself. In effect, Israel's nuclear arsenal, or the protection of it, has become a diplomatic instrument against its benefactor.

t is a legacy of America's own "original sin", that first, reluctant acquiescence in a nuclear Israel, subsequently turned into uninhibited endorsement of it by seemingly ever more pro-Israeli administrations. So here is a superpower, wrote the US strategic analyst Mark Gaffney, so "blind and stupid" as to let "another state, ie Israel, control its foreign policy". And, in a brilliant study, he warned that a US assault on Iran could end in a catastrophe comparable to the massacre of Roman legions at Cannae by Hannibal's much inferior army. For in one field of military technology, anti-ship missiles, Russia is streets ahead of the US. And Iran's possession of the fearsome 3M-82 Moskit could turn the Persian Gulf into a death trap for the US fleet. And sure enough, from the Bush administration itself, the first hints have been coming that, given the regional havoc Iran could indeed wreak, there may be nothing the US can do to stop it going nuclear.

This points to a second way the crisis could go - with Israel obliged to renounce its monopoly and the Middle East entering a cold-war-style "balance of terror". It could be a stable one. Clearly, like Israel, the mullahs would make irresponsible, political use of their nukes. But, like Israel's, Iran's nuclear quest is essentially defensive, even if not in quite the same fundamentally "existential" sense. Nothing could have more convinced it of the need for an unconventional deterrent than the fate of that other "rogue state", Saddam's Iraq, which the US had no qualms about attacking because it didn't have one.

The third way - Iran's abandonment of its nuclear ambitions - would stand its best chance of being accomplished if Israel were induced to do likewise; not just because reciprocity is the essence of disarmament, but because it would signify a fundamental change in America's whole approach to the region.

And that might have positive effects beyond the nuclear. "There is only one way," said the Israeli military analyst Ze'ev Schiff, "to avoid a nuclear balance of terror: to use the time left, while we still have a monopoly in this field, to make peace ... In the framework of peace, a nuclear-free zone can be established." But that is the wrong way round.

To make peace, as the CIA foresaw, Israel doesn't need the intransigence that absolute security brings, but the spirit of compromise that a judicious dose of insecurity might. A utopian notion perhaps, with the world now so focused on the villainy of Iran - yet better than a US onslaught that would add so thick a layer to an already mountainous deposit of anti-western feeling that Israel could barely hope ever to win acceptance in the region.

He said the United States could suspend import allowances for Iranian rugs and pistachios, which were relaxed years ago in hopes of stimulating small business in Iran, and consider a crackdown on alleged financial crimes similar to U.S. pursuit of alleged fraud by North Korea. There are steps other governments could take as well, Bolton said, including financial and travel restrictions.

The United States has had no diplomatic and few economic ties with Iran since the 1979 storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Bolton dangled the possibility, however, that Iran could improve its relations with the U.S. if it ended its alleged drive for weapons of mass destruction.

"The Iranian government ... can get out of the trap they've put themselves in by reversing the strategic decision to seek nuclear weapons, and the example that's out there of what lies in store for them is the case of Libya," Bolton said.

He said Libya three years ago made a "hardhearted, national interest calculation" that it would gain more by forswearing further nuclear weapons development and thereby "opened the possibility of substantially different relations with the United States and other countries."

If Iran followed the Libya model, "we'd be prepared to consider a new relationship with them, too," Bolton said. U.S. officials said last year they planned to re-establish full diplomatic relations with Libya by the end of 2005, but the plans stalled.

Bolton's Iranian counterpart, Ambassador Javad Zarif, contended in a New York Times op-ed piece Thursday that Iran is committed to nuclear nonproliferation and eager for talks.

"Pressure and threats do not resolve problems," the Iranian diplomat wrote. "Finding solutions requires political will and a readiness to engage in serious negotiations. Iran is ready. We hope the rest of the world will join us."

The United States accuses Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons under the cover of a legitimate civilian energy program, and has long favored using the punitive deterrent powers of the Security Council to bring international pressure to bear on the clerical regime.

The Iran case is now finally before the Security Council but Bolton did not sound confident the strategy will work.

He said the "obvious difficulty" represented by the three-week delay and hefty diplomatic muscle required to win a first, mild rebuke to Iran from the Security Council last month "says something about the difficulty of the road ahead."

Iran allies Russia and China opposed a tougher stance sought by Bolton and European diplomats but eventually signed on to a written demand that Iran comply with previous U.N. nuclear watchdog requirements for its disputed nuclear program. Russian and China are also on record opposing punitive sanctions for Tehran if it does not comply, although U.S. officials say they do not rule out getting some kind of sanctions approved in the future.

Bolton laid out what he called a "calibrated, gradual and reversible approach," that ratchets up diplomatic pressure on Iran at the Security Council.

Last month's "presidential statement" gives Iran 30 days to comply with directives from the International Atomic Energy Agency. If Iran refuses, the next step would be a Security Council resolution saying the same thing, but which Bolton said would be legally binding on Iran. It would probably carry another grace period for Iran to comply, he said.

If that failed, "then we will consider the next step, which could well be a ... resolution that imposes sanctions of some kind," Bolton said.

It is unclear whether Russia and China, permanent members of the Security Council that hold veto power, would agree to either resolution.

Iran denies it is building a bomb, but insists it must retain control of sensitive aspects of nuclear development that can be used either for energy or weaponry.

Thus, while Secretary Rice was telling British audiences last week that military action "is not what is on the agenda now" but that President Bush "never takes any option off the table," her host and British counterpart Jack Straw has repeatedly and strenuously made clear that military action is "inconceivable."

Until now, the Bush administration and the Europeans have done their best to paper over the inherent conflicts in their respective positions. But that is fast becoming untenable: Security guarantees, after all, involve giving Tehran cast-iron promises that it will not be attacked and working to normalize relations with the regime, in order to remove any incentive it might have for creating a nuclear deterrent. The conflict in strategies was visible this week when administration officials rebuffed the suggestion by Germany, backed by Britain, that Washington hold direct talks with Tehran to break the nuclear deadlock.

The dynamic with Iran, in fact, is starting to look a lot like the diplomatic wrangling over that other notorious member of the "Axis of Evil," North Korea. In that on-again, off-again six-party negotiating process, which includes North Korea, South Korea, Russia, China, the U.S. and Japan, the consensus among everyone but the U.S. is that walking Pyongyang back across the nuclear threshold requires offering it security guarantees and direct talks with the U.S. Washington hawks have long balked at those conditions, but the agreement of principles concluded last September does, in fact, include a security guarantee from the U.S. in exchange for North Korea renouncing nuclear weapons. Those talks have remained deadlocked since last fall, but the suspicion that Washington is seeking the collapse of the regime in Pyongyang has resulted in an increasingly open split between the U.S. and South Korea, the democracy whose protection is the reason U.S. still has troops on the Korean peninsula.

Long before the current nuclear standoff heated up, this preference for regime change has caused the White House to duck opportunities for dialogue with Tehran. Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, says an Iranian offer of talks to address all U.S. concerns was rebuffed in 2003 at the behest of the regime-change faction of the Bush administration. Former Bush National Security Council official Flynt Leverett has confirmed this account, and warns that the administration lacks a serious Iran policy by virtue of President Bush's refusal to engage with a regime he considers fundamentally illegitimate. Everett notes: "Because of the administration's deliberate decision to rule out serious strategically grounded diplomacy with Iran on this issue, [Security Council action and a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities] are the only two options they've got, and neither is going to work."

The Europeans know that, which is why in the coming months they will insist, ever so delicately, that Iran be offered expanded incentives along with the threatened penalties. The really bad news for Washington hawks is that the only incentives that matter are those that can be offered by, you guessed it, the U.S. And if Washington balks at offering Tehran what most of the international community would regard as reasonable security guarantees, it won't only be Iran that finds itself isolated.