Martin Stabe points us to the latest New Yorker piece from Seymour Hersh, who reports that the White House is leaning towards using Iranian involvement in Iraq as a pretext for air strikes, rather than the Iranian nuclear programme:
The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.
During a secure videoconference that took place early this summer, the President told Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, that he was thinking of hitting Iranian targets across the border and that the British “were on board.” At that point, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice interjected that there was a need to proceed carefully, because of the ongoing diplomatic track. Bush ended by instructing Crocker to tell Iran to stop interfering in Iraq or it would face American retribution. (New Yorker)
The prospect of a war with Iran in 2008 would be a very strong incentive for Brown to call an early election. In that respect, it might be a very hopeful sign if he were to pass up the opportunity.
