Who you gonna bomb?

It looks like Ahmadinejad is as dumb as Shrub. Instead of chilling out and giving the neocon warhawks less and less reason to attack, the Iranian presidente is ramping up his country's nuke program.

Like a bull in a china shop, the NY Times writes, Ahmadinejad is stubbornly insisting that nuclear power is his country's right and he's going to keep doing whatever the hell he wants because the United States is an immoral foreign power with no rightful authority over the Middle East. Of course, this is nothing new. He's been singing the same Arabic version of Bush's "I'm the decider" for years now.

What is new, though, is that for reasons some of us can't quite fathom, Shrub has apparently decided we need to fuck up Iran, too. And we probably will.

The Times:

Since the last report by the atomic agency, President Bush has ordered two aircraft-carrier groups to patrol the waters off Iran, an unsubtle reminder that if diplomacy fails, Mr. Bush could rapidly order air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The BBC:

US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country's military infrastructure, the BBC has learned.

It is understood that any such attack - if ordered - would target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control centres...

diplomatic sources have told the BBC that as a fallback plan, senior officials at Central Command in Florida have already selected their target sets inside Iran.

That list includes Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Facilities at Isfahan, Arak and Bushehr are also on the target list, the sources say...

For right now, Shrub's got nothing. But that's likely to change, especially since U.S. officials have been trying to convince everyone that Iran's been channeling roadside bombs and other weapons into Iraq for use against American soldiers. And half the fucking Bush Administration isn't even keeping their designs a secret.

From Newsweek:

At least one former White House official contends that some Bush advisers secretly want an excuse to attack Iran. "They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something [America] would be forced to retaliate for," says Hillary Mann, the administration's former National Security Council director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs.

The magazine concludes:

With Americans and Iranians jousting on the chaotic battleground of Iraq, the chances of a small incident's spiraling into a crisis are higher than they've been in years.

And U.S. forces are already playing cat-and-mouse with the Iranians, as the Newsweek article illustrates. They're looking for any excuse they can to brawl, and often creating situations where none previously existed, simply because... well, I don't know. I can't say for sure why Shrub or the U.S. forces would want to push Iran around, other than the fact that Ahmadinejad, like lil' Kim and Hugo, has been stepping on Shrub's toes for a long time and that he's tired of not getting his props.

Let's see... it took Shrub a year and a half after 9/11 to invade Iraq, but he had a lot more clout back then. This time, he'll have to sufficiently manipulate Ahmadinejad's scornful disrespect of the U.N. to get any backing for bombing runs, but my guess is they'll begin before the year is out.

Any wagers?

Mmmmmm, hummus...