Three thoughts on military threats against Iran

1. The threat.  If we listen to the Charles Krauthammers and Maverick McCains of the world, the same ones who drank Ahmad Chalabi's Kool-Aid on Iraq's nonexistent "weapons of mass destruction", Iran could develop a nuclear weapon any day now.  But given their record on Iraq, why would anyone in their right mind listen to them on Iran?  The people with actual credibility who have been looking at this seem to think the worst case would be that Iran is still years away from being able to produce nukes.

2. Threatening over the threat. Given that any immediate threat to the US from the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program is years away, does it really make sense for the Bush administration and the current Israeli government to be threatening military strikes against Iran's nuclear power program?  "No president should ever take the military option off the table", says Dick Cheney, the Dark Lord of Torture.

But you don't need a Georgetown degree in international relations to know that talking publicly about "keeping the military option on the table" is a way of publicly threatening war.  In the circumstances, this puts Iran in the position that if they back down, the leaders look like they're caving in to military threats from America and Israel.  It seems to me this makes a settlement less likely in the short term.

3. Bluffs get called.  Israel doesn't have a credible capability to make the hundreds of air and missile strikes on targets all over Iran that would be required to take out Iran's current nuclear program.  So why are they publicly threaning Iran with a military strike?  It could be something risky but rational like trying to build support for an American strike among Chrisitan Right voters, whose leaders take it as God's will that there should be wars and rumors of wars in the Middle East until the end of time.  (Literally.)  Or maybe they are just being reckless.

The US could bring in the weaponry and weapons platforms to make the strikes.  But the US Army is stretched to the max at the moment, and is being badly damaged by the Iraq War and its various ramifications.  It may sound macho to threaten to widen the war to Iran.  But the truth is that Iran has the capability to strike back at the US, in Iraq and elsewhere, in ways that would cost America more than any possible benefit from eliminating an alleged threat that is anything but imminent.