Spinwatch has a new blog by former US Air force Colonel Sam Gardiner. In his latest piece, Gardiner picks up on the recent Sunday Times article suggesting the US is planning to hit training camps in Iran.
Meanwhile at Sic Semper Tyrannis, Col Pat Lang picks up the same paper’s report that Sir John Scarlett is due to meet with Mossad.
In the comments, londanium offers a word of caution:
It’s called propaganda, it crops up whenever US aircraft carrier
groups cross over during their rotation into and out of the fifth fleet
area, and at sundry other points in the diplomatic schedule ( ie IAEA
board meetings, EU-Iran sessions, UNSC P5 meetings to discuss the Iran
dossier/further sanctions ).The Friedman unit is truly the default measure of US historical and current affairs amnesia.
That might fit with the more hopeful interpretation offered recently by Jim Lobe:
some analysts believe that Petraeus’ promotion to Centcom was actually engineered by Gates and Mullen not only because he is likely to enjoy exceptional influence with Bush, but also because, despite his championship by neoconservative hawks, they consider him a fellow-realist who shares the conviction that war with Iran would be a major strategic error.
Postscript: The optimistic scenario here doesn’t exclude one worrying possibilty, a proxy conflict in Lebanon.
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