ISRAEL: 'MILITARY CONFRONTATION WITH IRAN IS INEVITABLE'

One final point worth considering on Iran and the prospects for war: the Israel factor. Since the US government's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iranian nuclear ambitions (or lack of) was published on Monday, Israel - also known as America's 51st state - has been at the forefront of the campaign to discredit the NIE's seemingly dove-ish conclusions.

Speaking shortly after the NIE came out, Israeli defence minister (and former prime minister) Ehud Barak said he believed US intelligence had got it wrong and that his intelligence reports suggested Tehran is still trying to develop a nuclear weapon:

"It's apparently true that in 2003 Iran stopped pursuing its military nuclear program for a time. But in our opinion, since then it has apparently continued that program. There are differences in the assessments of different organizations in the world about this, and only time will tell who is right....We cannot allow ourselves to rest just because of an intelligence report from the other side of the earth, even if it is from our greatest friend.''

The new Israeli ambassador to London, Ron Prosor, went further than Barak in an interview on Thursday with the Daily Telegraph's uber-hawk Con Coughlin: "It should be made clear that if Iran does not co-operate then military confrontation is inevitable. It is either co-operation or confrontation."

And Friday's Guardian has this report: "Israel considering strike on Iran despite US intelligence report."

(Plus, Iran expert Trita Parsi, writing for antiwar.com, claims: "Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh referred to the report as a lie at a recent breakfast in New York, and Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer reportedly "doesn't buy" its findings.")

The Israelis have always refused to believe the Iranian civil nuclear programme is anything other than a covert military programme that poses a so-called 'existential threat' to the Jewish state. They have spent years issuing dire and bellicose warnings, claiming again and again that Iran is just a few years away from the bomb - yet, as Israel's own former deputy national security adviser Shlomo Brom once noted, rather sarcastically: "Remember, the Iranians are always five to seven years from the bomb. Time passes, but they're always five to seven years from the bomb."

The reality is that the Israeli defence establishment has long harboured a desire to carry out a re-run - against Iran - of the country's unilateral (and infamous) air strikes on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981. And as the Guardian report points out, "they may have been been heartened by the lack of international censure over its bombing raid in northern Syria in September, which may or may not have targeted a Syrian nuclear installation." (It never ceases to amaze me how the Middle East's only nuclear weapons state - Israel - can arrogate to itself the right to attack those of its neighbours who have no nuclear weapons on the pretext that it is protecting the region from nuclear weapons. We truly inhabit an upside-down, back-to-front, black-is-white-and-white-is-black gepolitical universe - one in which double standards seem to be the only standards.)

It is not only hawks in Israel who long for Osirak the Sequel. The neoconservative hawks within the Bush administration in Washington are equally keen for Israel to flex its muscles against Iran, to strike the first blow and to provoke a military conflict in the region which the American can then join (or claim to be 'dragged into'). In September, Washington insider Steve Clemons reported the following development:

"One member of Cheney's national security staff, David Wurmser, worried out loud that Cheney felt that his wing was "losing the policy argument on Iran" inside the administration -- and that they might need to "end run" the president with scenarios that may narrow his choices. The option that Wurmser allegedly discussed was nudging Israel to launch a low-yield cruise missile strike against the Natanz nuclear reactor in Iran, thus "hopefully" prompting a military reaction by Tehran against U.S. forces in Iraq and the Gulf."

"Hopefully"? It never ceases to amaze me how supposedly educated, intelligent, worldly and rational strategic thinkers, at the highest levels of their governments, in self-proclaimed democracies like Israel and the United States, can continue to agitate for an unprovoked war of aggression against Iran, which will undoubtedly make Iraq look "like a leisurely stroll in the park on a balmy Sunday afternoon."