Dangerous Escalation

In the world of daytime television the soap opera dominates. Pick your network, if your boob tube is on during that time chances are the storyline is one drama filled roller-coaster of a ride, mixed with a cocktail of various vices. In the arena of international relations, the closest thing we have to the soap opera is the continuing saga of the US-Iran estrangement. It has all the elements of drama: they started of as friends, good friends; there's a falling out; friendship turns to hostility; a final showdown. The news of escalating tensions from the MidEast appear to render true that there is indeed a showdown of sorts brewing between the two governments. This is very worrisome and should it continue, where and how the parties climb down the ladder, if at all, is not going to be easy.

To this writer, the evidence of escaltion abounds. In particular, events in neighboring Iraq rise to the level of a new decisional threshold being reached by the authorities in Tehran. Consider the weekend's downing of the helicopter and the sophisticated attack on US personal in Karbala in conjunction with the raid on the Irbil compound and the dispatching of the Stennis to the Gulf. If the clerical establishment has adopted the position, and it probaly has, that the best way to deter an attack upon themselves is to make Iraq a quagmire, then is it, at a minimum, within the realm of possibility that the weekends casualties are in direct response to the Irbil raid. Of course I can offer no proof, no secret sources; but surely this analysis is already being discussed by policymakers in DC. Certainly, proxies are the direct source of the attacks but under the direct supervisory authority of the clerical establishment's military wing. If correct, then if one party acts, the other will reciprocate. Violence could quickly spiral out of control. I can only hope that I am completely off the mark and worrying, as usual, way too much, but when you know the MidEast as I do, you know that there is many precedents for thinking the unthinkable.

One last point: analysis is not advocacy. Nothing could be further from what I want to see happen between the US and Iran. Nothing.