After the invations of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush administration in this article by Seymour Hersh (who broke the Abu Graib story) is claimed to be preparing for an attack on Iran. This significantly ups the stakes of the energy wars. China and India have just entered into long-term energy development contracts with Iran. They know from the attack on Iraq that such contracts can be expected to be thrown out by a US occupier. The case for an Asian defence alliance is growing stronger; just as the US provided a nuclear umbrella over Europe, a coalition of China, India, and perhaps even Russia could easily provide a credible defense of Iran. Even in the short term, there is a strong incentive for China and India to get involved: Iraqi oil became largely unavailable from the moment of the US invasion, and cutting off Iran's supply would have instantaneous consequences on the price of oil. But the long-term case is what's going to matter for these countries.
One possibility is that countries with an interest in keeping the US out of Iran will use the financial markets to promote their cause. We may see the development of a US-Japan axis, confronting Iran-India-China, with both sides trying to enlist the support of Russia and the Europeans. We've had peace for a long time and the US appetite for endless war, under the fading veneer of "fighting terrorism", but clearly focused on gaining control of the world's major remaining petroleum resources, will sooner or later meet some serious resistance.
newyorker.com
Bush’s reëlection is regarded within the Administration as evidence of America’s support for his decision to go to war. It has reaffirmed the position of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon’s civilian leadership who advocated the invasion, including Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Douglas Feith, the Under-secretary for Policy. According to a former high-level intelligence official, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the election and told them, in essence, that the naysayers had been heard and the American people did not accept their message. Rumsfeld added that America was committed to staying in Iraq and that there would be no second-guessing.
“This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.”
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The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer. Much of the focus is on the accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical, and missile sites, both declared and suspected. The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids. “The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible,” the government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told me.
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