There is no doubt left that this administration, in fact, seriously desires a conflict with Iran, and is doing everything it can to prepare for and provoke a war. This from Newsweek:

Some view the spiraling attacks as a strand in a worrisome pattern. At least one former White House official contends that some Bush advisers secretly want an excuse to attack Iran. “They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something [America] would be forced to retaliate for,” says Hillary Mann, the administration’s former National Security Council director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs. U.S. officials insist they have no intention of provoking or otherwise starting a war with Iran, and they were also quick to deny any link to Sharafi’s kidnapping. But the fact remains that the longstanding war of words between Washington and Tehran is edging toward something more dangerous. A second Navy carrier group is steaming toward the Persian Gulf, and NEWSWEEK has learned that a third carrier will likely follow. Iran shot off a few missiles in those same tense waters last week, in a highly publicized test. With Americans and Iranians jousting on the chaotic battleground of Iraq, the chances of a small incident’s spiraling into a crisis are higher than they’ve been in years.

Add to that this even more stark revelation from the Washington Post:

Some senior administration officials still relish the notion of a direct confrontation. One ambassador in Washington said he was taken aback when John Hannah, Vice President Cheney’s national security adviser, said during a recent meeting that the administration considers 2007 “the year of Iran” and indicated that a U.S. attack was a real possibility.

From one perspective, you can see it easily: Iran is seen as a major threat to stability in the region, and before some peacenik gets elected to the White House, those presently in power wish for a conflict to begin so that even if it cannot be ended within the current administration’s timeline, it will at least be waged in the next one. There are without doubt many within the Bush administration who see a war with Iran as a sheer necessity. There are other advantages as well: after Iraq, Bush and the Republicans got a substantial boost in popularity, second only to 9/11; a war in Iran might also boost their fortunes and entrap the Democrats just as a critically important election looms on the horizon. A conflict with Iran could be what Republicans need to win back control of Congress and retake the White House to boot. The internal and external politics couldn’t be better for a new war in the Gulf.

From that perspective (from within the White House), a war with Iran makes perfect sense. But from a different perspective, it is outright insanity. Afghanistan should always have been our focus; that’s where the terrorists really were, that’s where the attack on our country originated from, that’s where Democracy could have been born in the Middle East had we concentrated our willpower, firepower, and economic resources at it. Moving into Iraq was disastrous: it sapped our manpower and economic resources so that Afghanistan became less manageable and slipped out of our control, not to mention that it has broken both our budget and our military strength to their breaking points. Despite administration bluster that the world now trembles at even the hint of American might being pointed their way, the fact remains that the American military is now stretched so thin that it is weaker than it has been for decades, perhaps weaker than it has been in modern times. We are in no shape whatsoever to begin a new conflict, much less one with far a country with more strength than Iraq had.

The pro-war element has been spiraling to a self-perpetuated escalation, however; each new step makes the next one even more inevitable. Had we stayed and focused in Afghanistan, instability could have been contained; for all his evil, Hussein held Iraq, a lynchpin in the Middle East, in more stable control than anyone else could have. And by invading Iraq and thundering about the “Axis of Evil,” this administration has only inflamed Iran. We invaded the countries to its western and eastern borders and went ballistic in rhetoric about how Iran is pure evil, leaving them little doubt about our intentions–and accordingly, they have responded in kind. It is more than arguable that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is seen as unstable and potentially dangerous, was elected precisely because America was making itself far more a threat to Iran than it needed to. Ahmadinejad was, in a very real sense, created by the Bush administration to be the threat he now is. Had we stayed in Afghanistan only and stemmed the “evil” rhetoric, relations with Iran would be far different now.

A war with Iran is more frightening than one might imagine. Some seem to believe that we could simply bomb the country and therefore neutralize it, and that Iran would not respond beyond shaking in anger. But Iran is not Iraq, and short of overwhelming it with a massive invasion force, it cannot be easily quelled; Saddam Hussein discovered this. But the real disaster scenario would come when Iran figures out that America’s military might is stretched to the breaking point, and that if Iran’s military were to be fully applied toward an invasion of Iraq, no amount of American willpower could create enough new troops to handle the bloody chaos that would ensue. And with both Ahmadinejad’s political tilt and his economic woes, we should not think that such a war would not be exactly what he wants as well. It is far from unimaginable that he believes he could potentially win such a conflict.

There is very little doubt also that America could not, at present, handle a full-on assault by Iran. Already we cannot handle the Iraq insurgency alone. Iran could potentially throw half a million soldiers at the conflict, far more than any number we could conceivably muster–and the likelihood of other nations coming to our aid now is virtually nil, after Bush has so carefully alienated just about everybody who could potentially be of meaningful help to us. (Would you want to pour your forces into that kind of a conflict?)

Bush would be faced with a stark option: concede defeat or go nuclear. And while some in his administration might believe that the threat of going nuclear would be enough to contain the situation, or that nuclear weapons could be used without America being irreparably damaged in its relations with the world, I believe the truth is far different.

Perhaps I am being too pessimistic, as I was four years ago when I feared that Iraq would strike Israel in response to a U.S. invasion, and that Israel would respond with nuclear weapons. In fact, I hope that I am as mistaken as that. But as wrong as I was about that point, I was prescient in so many other fears about a conflict with Iraq, and I am not all that happy that my present fears may be just as well founded. America is weaker now because of the Bush administration, and the stakes in starting a war with Iran are far higher than they were with Iraq. Iran is larger, more populous, and more powerful than Iraq ever was, and we have driven them to a point where a conflict may be inevitable–and we may have convinced ourselves that Iran will be as much a pushover as we thought Iraq would be. And that would be a grave error.