Second, I’m not surprised. There are a lot of things pushing toward a war with Iran. Israel wants it, and so does Saudi Arabia (our heart and treasure, and yes I mean as viewed particularly by the right). At the same time, this administration refuses to negotiate with Iran, the one player that has the capacity to hurt us bad throughout the region. We threaten them, they naturally make it harder for us to do anything in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and then we escalate by naming the state agencies involved as terrorist supporters.

I’ve been arguing against this for quite a while. Well, in case I don’t finish a response in the other post, have a good Labor day weekend.

He’s onto something.

Here’s Kimberly Kagan (Fred’s wife) in the Weekly Standard’s Iran Dossier (“dossier” – now that’s ominous):

…Iranian intervention is the next major problem the Coalition must tackle.

(Here’s a good one from poster Njorl on Matthew Yglesias: How many Kagans does it take to screw in a light bulb?

One to describe how well it is going, one to say how marvelous the room will look when it is well-lit, and one to tell the workmen that with enough force, the bulb can be screwed directly into the ceiling plaster.)

Here’s Michael Rubin at AEI:

What should Washington do? It should not engage. Diplomacy absent Iranian sincerity is dangerous. Between 2000 and 2005, the height of Iran’s reformist period, European Union trade with Tehran tripled. Rather than reform, the regime invested the hard currency into its ballistic missile and covert nuclear program. Today, Iran uses engagement to spin its centrifuges and run the clock.

Michael Ledeen in the WSJ (abstract is enough – it’s not worth paying for anything Ledeen has to say):

For some time now, the chattering classes have debated whether the United States should negotiate with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Both sides have endowed the very act of negotiating with near-mythic power.

Another editorial from the WSJ by way of Future Jihad (the site’s progenitor is Walid Phares, currently FOX News Contributor on terrorism and Mideast):

It is worth recalling, however, that Iran was at its most diplomatically pliant after the United States sank much of Tehran’s navy after Iran tried to disrupt oil traffic in the Persian Gulf in the late 1980s. Regimes that resort to force the way Iran does tend to be respecters of it. It is also far from certain that Western military strikes against Revolutionary Guards would move the Iranian people to rally to their side: Iranians know only too well what their self-anointed leaders are capable of.

Most important, the world should keep in mind that Iran has undertaken this latest military aggression while it is still a conventional military power. That means that Britain and the U.S. can still respond today with the confidence that they maintain military superiority. That confidence will vanish the minute Iran achieves its goal of becoming a nuclear power. Who knows what the revolutionaries in Tehran will then be capable of

And, lest we forget, good ol’ warmonger-not-warfighter Norman Podhoretz in Commentary, who makes it quite plain in his notorious The Case for Bombing Iran:

[Quoting Robert Joseph]: “we could wake up one morning to find that Iran is holding Berlin, Paris or London hostage to whatever its demands are then.”

And these guys are just getting warmed up.

And here’s a revealing illustration of how the media – here represented by the New York Times – choose to market, if you will, the same story. The AP story linked in the first paragraph of my main post was headlined – by the Times – “Nuclear Agency Sees Progress on Iran” and focused on how Iran was cooperating with the IAEA and, in the first paragraph, noted that Iran seems to have slowed uranium production.

Contrast that headline and hook with this one, written by the Times’s own reporters. It’s headlined “Iran Expanding Its Nuclear Program, Agency Reports”. The fact that the program is running “well below capacity” is not presented until the third graph. After some he-said-he-saids between ElBaradei and a Bush spokesman, the article descends into what could only be called opinionating, since it’s not attributed:

Iran, meanwhile, seems to have embarked on a new strategy to give the impression it is fully cooperating with the agency on explaining its past violations.

Iran now seems to be hoping that by shifting the focus away from its current enrichment activities and satisfying agency demands on past questions it can deprive the international community of one of its main arguments to impose new sanctions.

“Seems to…” That’s kind of like Fox’s favorite, “Some say…” Used this way, it virtually says that Iran is lying. Are the reporters saying that? An editor? Since it’s not attributed to anyone, it must come from the Times itself. On the whole, the article is far more informative than the AP story, but the headline, lede and the sourceless opinion about what Iran “seems to be” doing leave the impression of yet more evidence mounting for an attack on Iran.