I've been arguing that the U.S. will attack Iran since spring of 2006 when Seymour Hersh wrote an article in New Yorker magazine exposing the Bush administration's internal debate about whether or not to attack Iran with nuclear weapons.

In my initial piece on the topic, I said that it was unclear exactly when such a war would happen and argued that if the Decider decided to strike, he would do so either well before 2006 Congressional elections or immediately after.  Many anti-war figures and websites have been predicting a U.S. attack on a particular month, week, and holiday for the last four years now, and all of them have been wrong.

But just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it won't.

Lance Selfa, writing in the new issue of Socialist Worker, lays out why he thinks a war with Iran is probably not going to happen on Bush's watch:

I think the odds are against an attack on Iran under the Bush administration.  The problem that Iran poses to the U.S. is larger than the obsessions of the small, largely discredited band of neoconservatives in Washington -- or that of a desperate administration looking for a boost in the polls.

Selfa goes on to explain that the conflicting interests of the ruling classes of Iran and the U.S. are the real reasons for the tension, not the preoccupation of religiously-inspired right-wingers (Bush and Ahmadinejad) or the lies about Iran supplying EFPs to Iraq's Shia militas.  He goes on to make the case that the interests of the American ruling class would be better served by launching an attack after Bush's term is over:

Waiting would also give the U.S. time to rebuild its international standing after the Bush administration is gone. . . .

But if U.S. imperialism decides that war is the only way that it can achieve [its] objective[s], it will most likely wait until it can delegate this task to a President Clinton or Obama -- both of whom have shown no hesitation to rattle the saber against Iran.

The problem with this analysis is that "U.S. imperialism" is not a person or an entity that can decide or not decide anything.  As Bush is fond of saying, he's the Decider (capital D).  Talking about U.S. imperialism as if it can consciously delegate or not delegate decisions is a mistake.  Concretely, it is the Bush administration that will decide whether or not to attack Iran, not some mythical/abstract U.S. imperialism.

Concretely, "U.S. imperialism" did not give the order to invade Iraq on the eve of March 19, 2003 -- the Bush administration did.  Of course the administration gave that order after securing the support the majority of the ruling class (the Congressional war authorization vote in October 2002 passed overwhelmingly) and after making the case for war week in and week out for six months beforehand.  It's also worth noting that the invasion was not a bolt out of the blue or some kind of radical departure from "normal" American foreign policy.  Bush's predecessors, Clinton and Daddy Bush, killed 1.5 million Iraqis through murderous sanctions and periodic bombings throughout the 90s while crossing their fingers for a pro-U.S. military coup to topple Hussein.

The 9/11 attacks provided a historic opportunity for the American ruling class to finish off the Hussein regime, install a puppet government over the world's second largest oil supply, and build permanent military bases next to Iran and Syria, and they seized it.  Strategically, out of all the nations on America's enemies list (Iran, Iraq, Cuba, N. Korea, Libya, etc.), Iraq was the weakest and most profitable target for the "Global War on Terror" after the first installment in Afghanistan.

I mention all of the above because it's important to understand both the continuity and the changes in U.S. policy which have led to the current debacle in Iraq and which are leading inexorably to a future catastrophe in Iran.

So back to Iran, Bush, and the coming war.

I agree with Selfa that Iran is a problem not just for the neo-conservative chicken-hawks.  I agree that Hillary and Obama would have a much easier time attacking Iran than Bush would.  And I agree that even after a devastating bombing campaign Iran will continue to be an obstacle to U.S. (and Israeli) domination of the Middle East.

But I remain convinced that Bush is going to attack Iran before he leaves office in January 2009 for a few reasons.

1.) The preparations for an attack on Iran are not a bluff. Selfa speculates about the sources of and motivations for the increasing number of leaks that have recently fed the internet rumor mill (and my blog).  He raises the possibility that Bush is talking tough and moving huge amounts of military hardware into the region as a bluff to scare Iran into kow-towing and cites Nixon's "Madman" theory as a historical precedent.

This precedent actually goes against Selfa's case.  When the Vietnamese didn't come "begging for peace" after Nixon threatened a nuclear attack on the USSR, he invaded Laos and Cambodia to prove that his threats were not completely empty.

In the same issue of Socialist Worker, there's an article by Alan Maass about the Air Force's "accidental" transport of six 150-kiloton nuclear missiles by air over the U.S.  They were flown from a base in North Dakota to Barksdale Airforce Base in Louisiana, where cruise missiles were loaded onto planes during Clinton’s air attacks on Iraq in the 90s and during the Operation Shock and Awe bombardment ordered by Bush in 2003.

Moving nuclear missiles to bases where airstrikes on the Middle East are launched from and deploying almost half the U.S. navy near Iran's coast should not be viewed as a bluff.  Now I'm not saying Bush has already made the decision to attack Iran just because he's parked half the navy in the waters of the Middle East.  Despite the years of leaks about Iran war plans (the Army began working on them shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April of 2003), the administration is only now trying to figure out exactly what its military options are.

This in and of itself does not mean that war is at hand.  However, it's occurring at the same moment that the non-military route is reaching a dead end, which brings me to my next point.

2.) "Diplomacy" is not working, Iran will not bend. Back in 2005, there was a debate in the administration about whether or not to join the talks that Britain, France, and Germany initiated with Iran over its nuclear power program.  Cheney, whose fingerprints are on every major decision the Decider makes, agreed to allow Condi Rice pursue the diplomatic route because he knew that to get military action the U.S. would have to go through the motions of diplomacy.  That is exactly what's happened.

In March of 2006, the U.S. announced that it supported the European effort, but insisted from the start that Iran had to suspend all uranium enrichment before the U.S. would talk with them directly.  Imagine the police demanding a terrorist release all of his hostages before the start of any negotiations.  It's a terrible strategy if your goal is to free all the hostages unharmed but it's a great strategy if you want to storm in and kill the terrorists.  Despite the U.S. position, Iran continued to enrich uranium.

At the end of 2006 and again at the beginning of 2007, the U.S. persuaded the U.N. Security Council to vote for mild economic sanctions against Iran, its leaders, and its nuclear program.  Iran ignored the resolution and continued enriching uranium, not out of stubbornness, stupidity, or fanaticism but out of sheer economic and political necessity.  Iran cannot generate electricity by consuming ever greater amounts oil to power its economic growth because the sale of oil is the main source of income for the government.  Developing nuclear energy is the only way for them to meet their growing electricity needs and keep the government from going bankrupt.

Now, Germany, China, and Russia are opposed to a new round of U.N. sanctions (and even if the U.S. managed to twist their arms into supporting new sanctions, Iran would ignore them anyway).  The U.S. has not changed its position that Iran must halt enrichment before talks can begin.

Where the diplomatic road ends, the road to war begins.  Time is running out for the Bush administration, which is why Cheney's national security adviser says that 2007 is "the year of Iran."  They do not want to leave to the next administration a stronger, more influential, and nuclear-powered Iran in the most strategically important region of the world.  Doing so would be, in the Bush team's view, a huge failure.  They can't afford another one.

3.) Hand the Democrats the mess in January 2009. I'm assuming a Democrat and not John Bomb Bomb Iran McCain or another Republican will win the 2008 presidential election.  It's a safe assumption, given that Iraqis will not lay down their arms and surrender to the occupier any time soon.

No one from the Bush administration is up for election in 2008, which means public opinion will mean even less to Bush than it already does.  He will retire to his coloring books at his ranch in Crawford while Cheney will enter his secure undisclosed location never again to see the light of day after January 2009.  The best time for an attack on Iran would be after the November elections or just before the new Democratic president is sworn in.  That way the Republicans won't suffer at the polls if the attack is a political and military disaster and the Bush administration can give Hillary/Obama an even bigger mess than Iraq to clean up.

Cynical?  Absolutely.  But after seven years of Bush's reign and non-opposition from the Democratic Party, I see no reason not to be.