'Sources': Cheney senior aide promoting plan to provoke Iran into military response against U.S.

Above: The USS John C. Stennis, the USS Nimitz, the USS Bonhomme Richard, the USS Antietam, the USS O'Kane, the USS Higgins, the USS Denver and the USS Rushmore pass through the Gulf of Oman as part of war games currently underway in the Persian Gulf involving 17,000 personnel.

There is a race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy...

Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously...

The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).

This strategy would sidestep controversies over bomber aircraft and overflight rights over other Middle East nations and could be expected to trigger a sufficient Iranian counter-strike against US forces in the Gulf -- which just became significantly larger -- as to compel Bush to forgo the diplomatic track that the administration realists are advocating and engage in another war.

Read the rest at the Washington Note

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