Is Iran Next?

Drudge links to this Jerusalem Post story that says the US is preparing for a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.
The United States government reportedly began coordinating with NATO its plans for a possible military attack against Iran.
Many rather similar stories have talked about a possible Israeli strike against these facilities, but most doubt that Israel can carry off such a strike in convincing fashion. Compared to the strike Israel carried out against the Iraqi reactor way back when, attacking a dispersed and possibly largely underground Iranian nuclear program is much harder and much farther away. No one doubts that the US could carry out such attacks, but whether they would succeed is a question, and so is the resulting backlash in Shiite Iraq.

My guess is that at the moment, we are just seeing more saber rattling, intended to pressure Iran into abandoning uranium enrichment. If and when the strike comes, and I guess it will if Iran doesn't blink, I suspect that it will be ostensibly done by the Israelis - or with US weapons wearing Israeli uniforms. A (covertly US supported) Israeli strike probably has a fair chance of success.

From Israel's point of view, the failure of the US-Israeli plan in Iraq makes the Iranian threat more acute. The virtual certainty that Iraq will be ruled by an Iran friendly Shiite religious party greatly magnifies the threat that both countries pose to Israel. Almost nobody wants to see Iran with nukes, and my guess is that it won't be permitted to get them. Whether the highly discredited US intelligence agencies know enough to cleanly destroy the Iran nukes is another question.

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