Paris, February 14, 2006 -- The quickening drumbeat of Washington forecasts of attack upon Iran increasingly leads one to think this is not simply neo-conservative and Israeli pressure upon the Bush administration to act. It may be evidence that such an attack now is being developed and is a serious possibility.
The negative consequences of such an attack, Iran’s possible military and economic ripostes, the devastating potentialities of a new war for Bush administration policy itself, for American relations with the Islamic world, and for the future of the United States, have by now been fully and even angrily described by critical analysts and ex-governmental figures both conservative and liberal.
The measures of retaliation available to the Iranian government, and the ineluctable international backlash – above all if nuclear weapons should be used – must certainly have been set before everyone in a senior foreign policy position in Washington.


Yet there is a strong streak in this government of belief that the United States is invulnerable and omnipotent.
This was demonstrated by the Iraq invasion itself, undertaken not only behind a screen of public deception but – much more significant – with an administration rationale and expectations riddled with self-deception. It is again evident in the continuing determination today to turn Iraq into an American strategic outpost, whatever the Iraqis think or do.
This is not an American government that seeks full intelligence, practices what bankers and lawyers call due diligence, or acts with prudent concern for consequences, even the foreseeable ones, not to speak of unforeseen possibilities. It believes power eventually prevails.
The administration’s deliberate exploitation of torture, attack on human rights, and indifference to established international norms of civilized behavior, have the apparent purpose of international intimidation. They express the conviction that power is all.
The encouragement of deliberate individual brutality in Afghanistan and Iraq by troops and mercenaries, and the employment of torture and targeted assassinations, are not without precedent (in any war), but on this scale these practices are new to the American army.
Some military observers suggest that the aggressive policies of the Bush administration imitate Israeli practice, which certainly has been an influence on American military forces, and because of Israel’s precarious geopolitical situation favors preemption and rule-breaking.
The conviction expressed in the White House in December 2004, that America is an empire now and does not submit to reality but “makes reality” seems unshaken among senior policymakers, despite the damaging events that have followed.
Nor has the administration been impressed by the fact that Israel’s power-led policy in the Palestinian territories, seized in the 1967 war, steadily has worsened Israel’s security over the last three decades and a half. The policy would have made sense only if its purpose was to prevent a political settlement with the Palestinians rather than to promote one.
There is also a Marxist influence on administration thinking about enlarging its war with Islamic societies. This has been transmitted to the Bush government from the Trotskyism that influenced the ways of thinking of today’s neo-conservative offspring of those men and women who fought the ideological struggles of the 1930s and 1940s.
Marxism (Trotskyism in particular), like neo-conservatism, is a doctrine of provisional catastrophe. There will be a political paradise on earth, but it will only come through wars and other catastrophic events. This is a characteristic of all totalitarian thought. What it means is that if an attack on Iran makes America’s conflict with Islam worse, this is good, because it brings the final triumph closer.
Such is also the apocalyptic theological outlook of many of the fundamentalist Protestant supporters of the president (and conceivably of the president himself, since he describes himself as a born-again believer). Their conviction is that bad times and war actually are good times, since they are the prophesied and necessary preliminary to the End of Time and the Christian Messiah’s return.
An attack on Iran would probably be designed as a sustained air assault on all of Iran’s nuclear facilities, and possibly on research centers and the government itself (although some argue for a limited attack on key elements in the nuclear development process – assuming these really are known).
The problem with this is that strategic analysis would probably propose that Iran’s principal oil-producing fields be occupied as well, which are located in the south, next to the Basra region in Iraq and near Kuwait, at Iran’s opening to the Gulf.
That would mean land war, which the Iranians certainly would not be content to see confined there. The American deployment in Iraq and in the region provides much more interesting potential targets, as do American interests elsewhere.
This is why the Bush people may still hesitate over an attack on Iran. But the administration has demonstrated a view of the realities and possibilities of war that is not the one held by ordinary mortals; its decisions are unpredictable.
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