Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Editorial: Look for clues on Iran
Years from now, will we refer to these early days of 2007 as "the run-up to the Iran War"? That's what it feels like in Washington as President George W. Bush prepares to deliver his seventh State of the Union address tonight at 9.
"To be quite honest, I'm a little concerned that it's Iraq again," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV told The New York Times. "This whole concept of moving against Iran is bizarre."
Rockefeller knows more than most. As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he had a front-row seat as Bush misled us into Iraq and he has access to the most sensitive intelligence about Iran.
One of the things that characterized the run-up to the current quagmire was the obfuscation and manipulation of intelligence. But there are no signs the Bush Administration knows any more about what's going on inside Iran than they knew about Iraq. There's no reason to believe they have a better plan for what to do with Iran after the fighting starts than they had going into Baghdad.
Nonetheless, administration officials have ramped up the rhetoric against Iran. Bush rejected the Iraq Study Group's recommendation that he seek Iran's help in stabilizing Iraq. Last week U.S. forces attacked an Iranian consulate in Iraq, and Bush just dispatched a second aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf.
But even as the Bush Administration demonizes him, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to be losing support at home. His party has lost recent elections and the clerics who hold the real power in Iran are signaling their discontent. Last week, two hardline newspapers, one of them owned by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called on Ahmadinejad to back off from confrontation with the West over nuclear development.
If cooler heads are prevailing in Tehran, will they prevail in Washington? Tonight's speech, and the reaction to it, may provide a clue.
Four years ago, George W. Bush used his State of the Union speech to make the case for the invasion of Iraq. He talked about Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of chemical weapons - stockpiles that were never found. He talked about Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium in Africa - a fiction he officially retracted months later.
So listen closely to what Bush says about Iran. If he tries to hang a Saddam Hussein mask on Ahmadinejad; if he warns of the growing threat of Iran's WMD program; if he stresses Iran's connections to terrorists like those responsible for 9/11, we may be watching a frightening sequel to a movie we've already seen.
Watch as well for the reaction, from Congressional Democrats, presidential contenders and media pundits. If George W. Bush appears intent on launching what would be his third war against a Moslem country in six years, who'll stand in hi
