The Time magazine on Friday, Oct. 26, published an article titled as ’ Iran War Drumbeat Grows Louder’. Time wrote the prospect of war with Iran is beginning to look real. The hardening of positions in both Tehran and Washington over the past week has brought relations to their lowest point since the Iran hostage crisis that began in 1979. Both sides insist that they seek no military conflict, but tensions on issues ranging from Iran’s nuclear program to influence in Iraq and the Arab-Israeli peace process is turning their differences into all-out regional power struggle. Last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticized Iran’s ’emboldened foreign policy’ and ’hegemonic aspirations…
On the critical issue of Iran’s uranium-enrichment program, Tehran and Washington are now engaged in a game of geopolitical chicken, which favors hard-liners on both sides, making compromise more difficult, escalation more likely and war a greater possibility than before. After President Bush invoked the specter of World War III to press the urgency of stopping Iran, the Administration followed up with another round of punitive measures.
The showdown has elements of a perfect storm. The decline of U.S. fortunes in Iraq has been accompanied by a rise in Iranian assertiveness، which has intensified with Ahmadinejad’s recent tough talk.
Trumpeting Iran’s nuclear ambitions as a nationalist cause, Ahmadinejad confrontational rhetoric, has called the Israel to be ’wiped off the map’ and goading the West by denying the Holocaust. Iran enthusiastically backed Hizballah and Hamas in their confrontations with Israel, and denounced the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
A similar hardening of positions has been taking place in Washington…
On Oct. 17, Bush warned that ’if Iran had a nuclear weapon, it would be a dangerous threat to world peace’ that risked a third world war. Four days later, Vice President Dick Cheney warned, ’The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences. We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.’…
The Time magazine added : the Administration designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction, and named the Corps’ Quds division as a supporter of terrorism. The tougher tone suggests that U.S. policy has taken a subtle, yet decisive, turn toward not merely stopping Iran’s nuclear program, but seeking the end of the Islamic regime.