I'm not sure where to begin this post. The American foreign policy elite's failure of imagination, and the dank, fever-swamp of Dick Cheney's 'One Percent Doctine' is fast pushing the leaders of our country off of a cliff. That is the only assumption I take away from tonight's Nelson Report. Nelson basically says that, based on his reading of all the inside discussions and debates ongoing in our nation's capitol, at some point in the not so far off future, we will, more than likely, attack Iran in some manner. I don't have the time right now to write up a long post, so here's what Nelson writes tonight about the American foreign policy elite's internal debate about Iran:

SUMMARY: on the “Iran question”, we note an increase in what might be called “informed community internal debate”...a real discussion debate, not a “leak” of what’s being actively planned. The topic...“if” the US launched a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, what would be the result?

More after the jump.

Continued:

As we go through the list-serve postings from diplomats, career military folks, strategic planners, and even a few journalists, we are struck by a sense of what might be termed reluctant inevitability. You don’t have to have to have read Sy Hersh’s latest, fascinating and depressing report in The New Yorker, to know that there has been a great deal of back-channel discussion between the US, Israel and other potential players, on the policy and practicalities of a possible effort to knock out Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

But Hersh’s piece is particularly valuable in that it adds meat to the bones of suspicion that the top levels of the professional US military are very, very concerned that the political decision-makers are not adequately assessing the likely Iranian reaction to a pre-emptive attack.

It is not a cheap-shot to constantly remind ourselves of the level of delusion which characterized the Bush Administration’s pre-Iraq war “intelligence”, a failure only exceeded by the post-war planning and execution. The lesson, is that it is both fair, and potentially life critical, to ask whether this Administration can be trusted to rationally assess what to do about Iran.

History will not be kind to the US Congress for its derelictions, either. In any event...

In the past few days, a professional military list serve we monitor has been full of a long list of questions, with some speculative answers. What strikes us as both daunting, and critically important, is a rising sense that hitting Iran would not be like going after the Taliban in Afghanistan. Rather, it would...absolutely would...produce attacks on not just US interests in the region, but the US itself.

The most commonly held view is that whether Iran struck back openly or indirectly, the results would certainly include an even worse security situation in Iraq, and blows directed at Saudi Arabia’s oil shipping capacity...with all that would imply to the US and world economy.

Given this assumption, the key question thus becomes whether the various attack risks can be balanced against the risk of trying to negotiate an acceptable Iranian membership in the international nuclear weapons club...”another Pakistan” is the most frequent analogy.

Where the internal discussion gets really depressing is a sense, among many careful, educated experts, that even if the odious Amadinejad was not President of Iran (with due allowance for the checks on his power), the example of the precarious situation in Pakistan gives us the real answer to “allowing” a mullah-controlled Iran to achieve nuclear weapons capability, at some point in the future.

As one Loyal Reader puts it:

“I have a number of fears about a nuclear Iran. One is that the Arabs and Turks will not be content to stand pat while someone like Ahmadinejad positions himself as the authentic leader of the entire Muslim world. We simply don't know where that will lead.

Another, more immediate issue is the ‘Pakistan problem’: our one previous example of a nuclear-armed state that is also an active sponsor of terrorist organizations suggests that if we have a problem with Hizbullah or other Iran-sponsored terrorists attacking our country, our allies, or our interests (e.g., those aforementioned Saudi oil terminals), well, too bad, because what are we going to do about it? Ask the Indians how much they liked having their parliament attacked and not being able to respond for fear of starting a nuclear war.

As bad as a conflict with Iran might be, after they have tested a nuclear device, the world will be even worse off. Still, don't get me wrong. The prospect of conflict is not pretty and we should not assume that we can control where events go. Perhaps it is better to fight sooner rather than later for that very reason, but no one should fool themselves about what it might look like.”

“Perhaps it is better to fight sooner rather than later...” we’ve underlined this reluctant conclusion, as it sums up pages of debate, in recent days. What it would seem to underscore is that the timeline for political decision-making may be a great deal shorter than a timeline based on the science of making a nuclear bomb. If there may be another 5 years, technically speaking, the political calculation is likely to be far, far shorter...that’s the message we’re getting from the insider’s discussion.

Is there no hope? Of course...it would seem to us, and to a great many people, that all of the above simply underscores why the US, Russia, the EU and, yes, China, need to redouble efforts to come up with a Grand Bargain for Iran...a deal that not even the demented bloviations of an Amadenijad can derail.

Is that possible? We don’t know. But we do know that there is an increasing sense of the likely cost of the failure to really try. As diplomat Jim Dobbins relates, look at Iranian negotiating behavior, and genuine assistance, during the operation to remove the Talbian from Afghanistan, and you see a surprisingly sophisticated, real politik picture of the decision-making capabilities of the current Iranian leadership.

Can you make a real deal on nukes? No one knows. But the risks of a military “solution” are increasingly seen as inevitable.

Three words: failure of imagination. This country will go to war because we can't get over the fact that Iran held dozens of our fellow countrymen hostage for a year-and-a-half almost 30 years ago. Great nations are not quite so petty, if you ask me.