Good news on Iran - kinda, sorta

Steve Clemons, who does solid reporting on diplomatic issues, argues in Why Bush won't attack Iran Salon 09/19/07, "Despite holding out a military option, ratcheting up tensions with Iran about meddling in Iraq and Afghanistan, and deploying carrier strike-force groups in the Persian Gulf, the president is not planning to bomb Iran."

This is good news. The problem is, by the time you get through the whole article and all his qualifications and concerns about how Cheney could set up a war anyway, I'm not terribly reassured. His piece does give some credence to what Andrew Bacevich recently said - I believe in was in this interview for Antiwar Radio - that he thinks a war with Iran is unlikely because he expects the military brass will make it clear to Bush and his advisers what a highly risky undertaking it would be.

In some ways, though, the most intriguing thing about Clemons' article is the anecdote with which he opens it:

During a recent high-powered Washington dinner party attended by 18 people, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft squared off across the table over whether President Bush will bomb Iran.

Brzezinski, former national security advisor to President Carter, said he believed Bush's team had laid a track leading to a single course of action: a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. Scowcroft, who was NSA to Presidents Ford and the first Bush, held out hope that the current President Bush would hold fire and not make an already disastrous situation for the U.S. in the Middle East even worse.

The 18 people at the party, including former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, then voted with a show of hands for either Brzezinski's or Scowcroft's position. Scowcroft got only two votes, including his own. Everyone else at the table shared Brzezinski's fear that a U.S. strike against Iran is around the corner.

And this from an article in which the author is arguing that a war on Iran is unlikely! Yikes! And, yikes!

Tags: andrew bacevich, iran war, steve clemons

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