The coming attack on Iran. posted by Richard Seymour

I don't see how it is deniable any more. The US is planning an attack on Iran. The military build-up has already enabled them to attack by Spring. The cassus belli is being assiduously prepared. Yesterday on BBC News 24, a strip of bold white text appeared on a red background: 'IRAN IN IRAQ'. Today, we get a glimpse of what all the fuss is about. The US is saying that it has 'proof', much of it hidden in a classified 200-page military report, that Iran is arming the Iraqi insurgency. They presented a table full of shells which they said bore Iranian serial codes and which had been found in Iraq. These are even less impressive than the grainy photographs supplied by Colin Powell to the United Nations. Leaving aside the dirty cheek involved in America decrying another country's involvement in violence in Iraq, everyone knows that there is a huge black market in weapons in Iraq, and that many of them are likely to have been produced in Iran. That's how black markets work. It's extremely likely, by the way, that many of the car bomb attacks use cars produced in America. What does this prove? Further, these shells were gathered in 2004: what kept them so long in displaying this information?

It's a really cheesy, obvious fraud, but whatever the scepticism of parts of the American ruling class and the European ones, the Bush administration has so far proven adept at giving the appearance of solidity to pure wind. Even if no one buys it, they won't have wasted this much money and effort on practise runs and military build-up for nothing. Bush knows he's going, and a last-minute hit and run operation in Iran would presumably suit him fine.