By Zbigniew Brzezinski
The Los Angeles Times

Talk of a US strike on Iran is eerily reminiscent of the run-up to the Iraq war.

Iran announcement that it has enriched a minute amount of uranium has unleashed urgent calls for a preventive U.S. airstrike from the same sources that earlier urged war on Iraq. If there is another terrorist attack in the United States, you can bet your bottom dollar that there also will be immediate charges that Iran was responsible in order to generate public hysteria in favor of military action.

But there are four compelling reasons against a preventive air attack on Iranian nuclear facilities:

First, in the absence of an imminent threat (and the Iranians are at least several years away from having a nuclear arsenal), the attack would be a unilateral act of war. If undertaken without a formal congressional declaration of war, an attack would be unconstitutional and merit the impeachment of the president. Similarly, if undertaken without the sanction of the United Nations Security Council, either alone by the United States or in complicity with Israel, it would stamp the perpetrator(s) as an international outlaw(s).

AntiWar.com

Nuclear blackmail: The essence of U.S. foreign policy

Is anyone surprised that our Supreme Leader has refused to rule out nuking Iran? Asked if there was anything to Seymour Hersh's scoop revealing U.S. plans for a nuclear strike against Tehran, Bush replied:

"All options are on the table. We want to solve this issue diplomatically and we're working hard to do so."

All options? Including genocide? Well, uh, yes – but don't worry. We'll issue a good number of threats before we actually commit mass murder: we'll bellow and beat our chests, like King Kong atop the Empire State Building. Then we'll nuke 'em! That's "diplomacy" in the Age of Bush II.

Bush says he plans to discuss the Iran issue in his talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao. One hopes the discussion will be informed by Mr. Jintao's knowledge of Chinese history, especially including Mao Tse-Tung's crazy-yet-plausible belief that China could survive a nuclear war and still come out on top. Maybe then the Americans will realize that someone, someday, will finally call their bluff.

By Phyllis Bennis
Common Dreams

The airwaves and the headlines are full of talk of a U.S. military strike against Iran. That is as it should be - the danger of such a reckless move is real, and rising, and we should be talking about it. The Bush administration claims that negotiations are their first choice. But they have gone to war based on lies before, and there is no reason to believe that they are telling the truth this time.

They have put the military - and even, horrifyingly, the nuclear - option at the center of the table. Don’t worry, they say, even if a preventive military strike is needed, we're only talking about “surgical” attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities - no one, they say, is talking about invasion. It can’t happen, some say. The military brass knows their troops are bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, they appear to be strongly opposed to a strike on Iran.

And we know that any military strike on Iran - ANY strike - would be a violation of international law prohibiting preventive war. And George Bush now admits that "preventive war" - not his earlier claim of pre-emptive war - is indeed his strategic doctrine.

By Stephen Gyllenhaal
The Huffington Post

As Iran's nuclear controversy heats up one thing seems abundantly clear. George Bush cannot be allowed to use nuclear weapons to solve the problem.

There is no more pressing issue on this planet, not the civil war in Iraq, not the crises in our immigration laws that have brought so many brave souls into the streets, not the voting machines that are dangerously uncheckable, not the nightmarish rollbacks of environmental laws that skew our resources for the benefit of a few desperate corporations, not the tax laws that rape more of our hard working citizens every day, not the decimation of the constitution by the Patriot Act and the domestic spying scandal, not the fading rights of women and working people.

By Joe Conason
Salon.com

If the U.S. attacked Iran, the consequences would be catastrophic -- including a possible American retreat under fire in Iraq.

As George W. Bush contemplates the prospect of attacking Iran and the regional conflagration that would result, he may be awaiting a heavenly signal that would confirm the doomsday predictions of his allies on the religious right. Here on earth, however, many of the same themes that promoted war on Iraq are beginning to appear again.

While the president arraigned Iran as a rogue state in the "axis of evil" alongside Iraq and North Korea years ago, the rhetoric portraying Tehran as the world's most evil and dangerous regime is increasing in volume and pitch. The story line is simple and scary: Iran is a dictatorial terrorist state on the brink of acquiring a nuclear arsenal, and it is led by a madman who resembles Hitler and threatens neighboring states, especially Israel.

By Ted Rall
Common Dreams

"I have fulfilled my destiny," the president says manically. He has just entered the nuclear launch codes that will trigger World War III. Seconds later, he emerges from a bunker. The Secretary of State squeezes between two soldiers. "Mr. President!" he shouts. "We have a diplomatic solution!"

He smiles. "It's too late," he replies. "The missiles are flying. Alleluia. Alleluia."

The above scene, from David Cronenberg's 1983 adaptation of the horror novel "The Dead Zone," is a classic if slightly preposterous nightmare of a world destroyed by a demented demagogue. Now, incredibly, a lunatic out of a Stephen King movie has brought the United States to the brink of Armageddon.

By Michael Young
Reason On-Line

On Tuesday, President George W. Bush repeated that "all options are on the table" in dealing with Iran's nuclear program.

Bush's Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who last week announced that Iran had enriched uranium, is using more inventive language, warning that the Iranian army was like a "meteorite" that would "cut off the hand of any aggressor and leave the enemy covered in shame."

For the moment, it's the international community that is covered in shame, particularly the so-called 5 + 1 group of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany. In a meeting in Moscow this week, the six once again failed to find a consensus on how to deal with the Iranians. In Bosnia and Iraq, when international agreement was lacking, the result was American-led military action. This time around, however, many a former official or analyst is advising the Bush administration to avert war, because Iranian blowback could be calamitous for American interests.

By Ehsan Ahrari
The Asia Times

It is not exactly a closely guarded military secret when the announcement appears as a dispatch in USA Today, a national newspaper that appears on every street corner, indeed, virtually every hotel in the land. The message this week: the National Strategic Gaming Center of the National Defense University (NDU) will conduct a "war gaming" exercise on July 18 involving Iran's nuclear program.

The United States' premier university for the education and training of its senior military officers, NDU is at Fort McNair in Washington, DC. War-gaming is a tabletop or even larger exercise simulating crisis management. Such exercises have become a standard business of the US military and the militaries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries. The purpose is to "game" various options, political and military, and their implications.

Such exercises now involve civilians, including even members of Congress, so it is important to recognize that going to war is treated as an option of last resort in such exercises, very much unlike what the Bush administration did in a "real-world situation", namely Iraq.

By Matthew Yglesias
The American Prospect

Should we go to war with Iran? The short answer is “no.” The long answer is “hell no.”

As the rumbles of war are heard over the horizon, many feel they’ve heard this whole story before. But with all due respect to those who correctly ascertained in advance that backing Bush’s march on Baghdad was insane, following the neoconservatives to Teheran would be far, far, far more insane.

The United States military is, for one thing, in much worse shape today than it was in March 2003 with far fewer resources at its disposal (see the Iraq War). The Iranian military, meanwhile, is in better shape than Iraq’s army was, since it hasn’t been subjected to more than a decade of stifling sanctions. Iran is geographically larger than Iraq. Its population is about twice as large as Iraq’s. Perhaps more to the point, the vast majority of the trouble in Iraq has been made by a distinct minority of the population -- the one Iraqi in five, more or less, who is Sunni Arab, the dominant group in the Baathist ancient regime. Fully half of Iranians are Shiite Persians, so we’re talking about a nationalist backlash with a population base about four or five times as large as the one we're facing in Iraq.

By Chris Floyd
The Moscow Times

Twelve hours. One circuit of the sun from horizon to horizon, one course of the moon from dusk to dawn. What was once a natural measurement for the daily round of human life is now a doom-laden interval between the voicing of an autocrat's brutal whim and the infliction of mass annihilation halfway around the world.

Twelve hours is the maximum time necessary for American bombers to gear up and launch an unprovoked sneak attack -- a Pearl Harbor in reverse -- against Iran, The Washington Post reports. The plan for this "global strike," which includes a very viable "nuclear option," was approved months ago and is now in operation. The planes are already on continuous alert, making "nuclear delivery" practice runs along the Iranian border, The New Yorker reports, and waiting only for the signal from President George W. Bush to drop their payloads of conventional and nuclear weapons on some 400 targets throughout the condemned land.

And when this attack comes -- either as a stand-alone "knock-out blow" or as the precursor to a full-scale, regime-changing invasion, like the earlier aggression in Iraq -- there will be no warning, no declaration of war, no congressional hearings, no public debate. The already-issued orders governing the operation put the decision solely in the hands of the president. He picks up the phone, he says, "Go," and in 12 hours' time, up to 1 million Iranians will be dead.