The United States and Iran are playing an increasingly dangerous game of chicken in the Gulf. War could be only a ship collision or aircraft intrusion away.
Nations often blunder into war due to miscalculation, arrogance, or wrong intelligence. One need only recall August, 1914, when joyous throngs of French or Germans cried out, “on to Berlin!” and “On to Paris!” and “Home for Christmas.”
The current confrontation between the US/Israel and Iran is about more than Tehran’s nuclear program. With Iraq defanged and Syria in turmoil, Iran is the last major Mideast state that refuses to be part of the US sphere of influence – what I call the American Raj.
As Iran’s noisy defiance grows, Washington fears its influence and prestige will suffer unless it brings the annoying mullahs to heel. The so-called “Arab spring” has a confused Washington ready to lash out, as Libya showed.
Iran’s fiery nationalism is anchored to its nuclear program. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei insists the West is determined to keep the Muslim world technologically backwards. Iran’s nuclear program is a great technological leap forward, which he insists is peaceful, for all Muslims.
Two recent US national intelligence estimates so far support the ayatollah’s assertions.
Meanwhile, Israel is straining every muscle to push the US into war against Iran, as it did with Iraq, thus sparing itself the difficult task. The recent string of murders of Iranian scientists appears designed to provoke Iran into a retaliation that would set of full-scale war.
The powerful US Israel lobby and its Christian fundamentalist allies (now 44% of all Republican voters) have bribed or intimidated the US Congress into pressing for war against Iran. A war, like Afghanistan and Iraq, that the US government will finance through borrowed money, not taxes.
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