How much do we really want to get into a war with Iran in the next two years? Would it help us or hurt us in resolving the mess we have on our hands in Iraq? Does it serve our national interests or not?

Perhaps you think this is all hypothetical and premature. But don’t bet on it. The president’s critics have long believed and warned that he and his key advisers were thirsting for military-backed regime change in Iran. But recent weeks have given the first tangible evidence that they are right — that either through blundering or preconceived plan they will pull us into a war with Iran by year’s end.

If you go back to the November election and the subsequent release of the Iraq Study Group report, it’s been treated as a given that the state of our efforts in Iraq are an almost unmitigated disaster. Even the White House no longer contests that undeniable point. The president soon sought to refocus attention on how to recover the situation and for that he proposed his rather anemic “surge” of 21,000 troops into Baghdad’s escalating urban warfare.

But the whole “surge” debate has had a certain unreal air to it. It quickly became clear that a majority of the Senate (all the Democrats and a decent number of Republicans) were against the policy. But it also became evident that the president was intent on getting the troops on the ground before the Senate had a chance to address the matter. That meant that if the Senate wished to assert itself through the power of the purse it would entail de-funding troops already in place, rather than preventing them from being deployed in the first instance — a much dicier move in political terms and a line the Democrats have made clear they won’t cross.

For these reasons, it’s been pretty clear since early January that the reality of the “surge,” rather than the politics of it, were pretty much a done deal. But even as that happened, the real signals coming out of the White House have all pointed to Iran. In both his “surge” presidential speech and the subsequent State of the Union address the president included pointed language blaming Iran for orchestrating violence in Iraq and warning that the U.S. would not hesitate to retaliate militarily — inside Iran or not — to Iranian provocations. 

Then there’s the deployment of naval assets in the Persian Gulf and the arrest — more or less as the president was giving his speech — of half a dozen Iranians in Erbil at what was at least arguably a diplomatic compound. Just recently we’ve learned that the president has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian operatives in Iraq. And just two days ago we heard the first anonymous administration allegations that the brazen attack on U.S. troops in Karbala might have been the work of Iranians or “Iranian-trained” operatives — which in Shia southern Iraq could be almost anyone.

President Bush now says that an invasion of Iran is not part of the plan. But that’s hardly reassuring because he and various other administration officials were quoted saying the same thing about Iraq through most of 2002, even though we now know that the invasion of Iraq was already a done deal as far back as late 2001.

In any case, given the administration’s record of mismanagement and incompetence, a preconceived plan to go to war with Iran isn’t the only possibility to consider. Both our allies in Iraq today have deep ties to Iran. By some measures we are already involved in what amounts to a proxy-war with the Iranians across much of Iraq. When we are arresting Iranian “agents” in Iranian consulates and engaging with them in firefights in Iraq, how much confidence do we have that the crew in the White House won’t simply bumble their way into a situation in which war becomes likely or even unavoidable? 

So the question remains: How much do we want war with Iran? Would it be a good development for the U.S. in the Middle East right now? Do you think Dick Cheney would answer that question the same way you did? And at the end of the day, do you trust the crew in the White House to handle this situation deftly even if you don’t think they’re gunning for a confrontation with Iran?

The simple fact is that the president’s interests have become radically disjoined from America’s. America can recover from a setback or defeat in Iraq. But President Bush’s presidency and historical reputation can’t. For him, Iraq is everything. And because of that, double-or-nothing — even triple-or-nothing — gambles start making a lot of sense. That’s a dangerous man to have at the helm right now, especially if he really still is the only “decider.”

Marshall is editor of talkingpointsmemo.com.
His column appears in The Hill each week.
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