‘Real men go to Tehran’

The Bush administration is set to embark on a final, foolish military adventure, says matthew carr

In May 2003 a senior Bush official succinctly expressed the administration's neanderthal conception of world politics, declaring: "Real men don't go to Baghdad, they go to Tehran."

Until recently the Iraq catastrophe appeared to have rendered the second option inconceivable. Conventional wisdom assumed that Bush was too discredited and the US military too vulnerable in Iraq to attempt another reckless adventure.

Last week, however, the respected analysts Dan Plesch and Mark Butcher from London University challenged this consensus in a chilling 80-page discussion paper considering a war with Iran.

According to the authors, the US military's 'Global Strike' capability makes it possible to "destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours" using conventional weapons and the option of nuclear weaponry, without

Bush claims that the ‘shadow of a

nuclear holocaust’ is hanging over the Middle East

committing significant numbers of troops.

Though this attack would be supported by Special Forces, it would not require an invasion. Instead, its ultimate aim would be to turn Iran into an 'oil-rich failed state' by destabilising the regime and annihilating its military infrastructure.

In itself, this report proves nothing. But there are other indications that the Bush administration may not have exhausted its capacity for mayhem.

There was last month's designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps as a global terrorist organisation, making it easier to use real or invented Iranian involvement in terrorist attacks as a pretext for war.

Already US and British Special Forces are believed to be operating in southern Iran and last week Bush delivered one of his most bellicose anti-Iranian speeches, warning of "the shadow of a nuclear holocaust" hovering over the Middle East.

In the same week, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published a note of understanding between the agency and