The US is quietly ratcheting up economic and financial pressure on Iran amid signs that talks about Tehran's suspect nuclear programme could resume next month. These two developments may be connected. But neither sanctions nor diplomacy can wholly obviate the dread possibility of military confrontation unless something fundamental changes soon at the heart of Iran's fundamentalist regime.
The USA would be crazy to think of launching a military attack on Iran. Even if Iran were to get a nuclear missile, the driving force of the US foreign policy of isolating and encircling Iran for geopolitical hegemony and energy security, exists independently of Tehran actually having nuclear weapons.
But the need for change lies not merely in Iran.
There needs to be a fundamental change in the West's over dependence upon oil and gas. To merely shift the responsibility for the aggression on to Iran only and to totally screen out what the USA wants in ramping up tensions with Tehran.
Indeed the USA and Britain's is fighting in Afghanistan is to get a rival TAPI pipeline to the Iranian IPI scheme. The US is not keen on Iran having any nuclear capacity for civilian use either, as that would mean the greater use of gas and oil as levers over neighbouring states like Turkey.
Moreover, US bases under the auspices of Centcom ( Central Command ) set up under Reagan do encircle Iran from all sides. The reason is to enforce The Carter Doctrine of 1980-that any threat to supplies of oil and gas would be considered a threat to national security and the USA's vital interests.
Ultimately, with Iraq having been invaded on the pretext of having non-existent Weapons of Mass destruction there would seem to be some logic in Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb given the threat the USA is seen to pose. The squeeze on Iran would exist independent of the particular government it has, crudely depicted as a some totalitarian theocracy.
Indeed in 1952 the decision of the Mossadeq government to nationalise Iran's oil led to the USA blackballing Iran so that no oil could flow out and subsequently in 1953 the CIA orchestrated a coup that brought to power the Shah and his repressive police state. Which in turn then eventually led to the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
This current global situation with the dangerous colliding and clashing of strategic interests is increasingly similar to that which existed in the immediate run up to The First World War. There are numerous hotspots where ethnic and religious separatism interacts with a New Great Game for oil and gas that could trigger off global conflicts.
This is desperately worrying. Corelli Barnett summarised this in 2007 ( A War Too Far ),
To achieve its targets, the Pentagon would have to unleash waves of attacks by more than 100 aircraft on the 20 widely dispersed plants of the Iranian nuclear industry. Prolonged bombing of military bases, barracks and air-defence systems, many of them in or near great cities, would be needed. We saw it all before, in much smaller and less populated Iraq.
The loss of life among civilians would far exceed the 7000 slaughtered during the "shock and awe" blitz on Baghdad that heralded the invasion of Iraq. If the bombers struck an already "live" nuclear plant, the result would be another Chernobyl. In addition, such an onslaught would inevitably mean war.
And it would mean war with a nation of 70 million people -- 65 per cent of whom are under the age of 25 -- at a time when the combined might of American, British and other international armed forces have been unable to subdue a country with a population of no more than 27 million.
Iran is a mountainous country much bigger than Iraq or Afghanistan and extending from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf, from Turkey to Afghanistan.
While the Iranian armed forces (including the 120,000 men of the Revolutionary Guards and the 200,000 in the Basij militia, all Islamic zealots) may be far inferior to the American forces in training and hi-tech weaponry, they fought a bloody war with Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army for six years -- proving that they are well able to take appalling attrition without buckling.
For them, every body bag contained a glorious martyr. No one should therefore underestimate Iran's capacity for prolonged resistance. War with Iran would be like Iraq plus Afghanistan multiplied by 10.
In a fresh demonstration of "asymmetrical warfare" (where the two sides are mismatched in their military capabilities), America's colossal firepower would be countered by guerilla ambush and terrorist bombings anywhere in the world where infuriated Muslims could inflict damage on the West.
Because of the connection between the Shias of Iran -- who make up 90 per cent of the population -- those of southern Iraq, and of Hezbollah in the Lebanon, the conflict would engulf the entire Middle East, from the Mediterranean coast to the borders of Pakistan and very probably sucking in the Sunnis of Saudi Arabia as well in reaction.
What's more, such a conflict would inflict terrible damage on the global economy because of its impact on oil supplies from the Persian Gulf.
It would be all too easy for Iranian suicide speedboats to make the narrow Straits of Hormuz too hazardous for the passage of the giant tankers on which the industrialised "First World" (now including China) depends. It would be all too tempting for the US Navy to try to clear that passage by force.
In short, an attack on Iran would effectively launch World War III.
The chilling reality is that such wars seem increasingly likely due to the lethal reliance of diminishing fossil fuels in dangerous far off lands, the contradiction between the West's need for stable or falling oil prices and the need in Iran and other Islamic nations for rising prices to stave off discontent.
Simon Tisdall, one of the Guardian's foreign affairs columnists, writes,
But the need for change lies not merely in Iran.
There needs to be a fundamental change in the West's over dependence upon oil and gas. To merely shift the responsibility for the aggression on to Iran only and to totally screen out what the USA wants in ramping up tensions with Tehran.
Indeed the USA and Britain's is fighting in Afghanistan is to get a rival TAPI pipeline to the Iranian IPI scheme. The US is not keen on Iran having any nuclear capacity for civilian use either, as that would mean the greater use of gas and oil as levers over neighbouring states like Turkey.
Moreover, US bases under the auspices of Centcom ( Central Command ) set up under Reagan do encircle Iran from all sides. The reason is to enforce The Carter Doctrine of 1980-that any threat to supplies of oil and gas would be considered a threat to national security and the USA's vital interests.
Ultimately, with Iraq having been invaded on the pretext of having non-existent Weapons of Mass destruction there would seem to be some logic in Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb given the threat the USA is seen to pose. The squeeze on Iran would exist independent of the particular government it has, crudely depicted as a some totalitarian theocracy.
Indeed in 1952 the decision of the Mossadeq government to nationalise Iran's oil led to the USA blackballing Iran so that no oil could flow out and subsequently in 1953 the CIA orchestrated a coup that brought to power the Shah and his repressive police state. Which in turn then eventually led to the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
This current global situation with the dangerous colliding and clashing of strategic interests is increasingly similar to that which existed in the immediate run up to The First World War. There are numerous hotspots where ethnic and religious separatism interacts with a New Great Game for oil and gas that could trigger off global conflicts.
This is desperately worrying. Corelli Barnett summarised this in 2007 ( A War Too Far ),
The chilling reality is that such wars seem increasingly likely due to the lethal reliance of diminishing fossil fuels in dangerous far off lands, the contradiction between the West's need for stable or falling oil prices and the need in Iran and other Islamic nations for rising prices to stave off discontent.