First, because the MidEast regimes who would supposedly be participating need the money. Many are indebted (quite a feat, that), and/or have social welfare schemes that help to keep their powderkegs stable, and the flow of booze, women, and gold-plated bathtubs coming. Cut your dollar intake, and bad things start to happen. This isn’t 1973. Venezuela is, I might add, in an even more precarious position. Which is why El Caudillo Chavez is America’s #5 oil source, and will continue to be.

Second, because there is no way to cut the USA off. The only option that’s feasible is to ratchet back production as a whole, and in that event you’d hit not just the USA but also Europe (bet that would make for a watchable new set of riots), China (uh-oh), India… many more players than there used to be. Not wise to piss them all off at once.

I’ll add that the Saudis in particular would quietly (and maybe even not so quietly) cheer an attack on Iran. They still talk about “The Arabian Gulf” there, you know…

Yes, it is indeed deliberate as I said. You bring up an excellent point that I forgot to cover, the point being that it was the foreign press that it was leaked to for all of the reasons you so correctly mention. Add to that that the leaker was a NATO official and the distancing from the U.S. becomes so obvious that it’s hard to even pretend that it’s not deliberate.

Again, I love these mind games

The core question is, of course, “would we do it?” as you point out and I agree with you that yes, we would and we will.

We have to.

If we choose to sit this one out, the Israelis will have no choice but to go it alone with predictable consequences for the political and military situation over there. Faced with a Jooo “solo”, the Arabs will most definitely close ranks and descend on Israel like locusts again. This we will be unable to stay out of so we’ll end up with a 100% probability of a major military confrontation in the Middle East and all of the consequences to our oil supply that you mention, not to mention the fact that the war will become very hot, very fast.

On top of that, the Israelis will have a very tough time of succeeding on their own. This isn’t Osiraq where the target was a single one with a nice bullseye painted on it. So we’ll end up with a certain major war on our hands and not even be sure that we got the Iranian program for our troubles.

Clearly, doing nothing is not an option for us here. We can’t ask the Israelis to sit idly by while a nation that has declared its intentions to wipe them off the map gets nukes.

That leaves us with door #2, doing it before the Israelis do.

I don’t worry too much about the Syrians piling on to create a diversion. Babyface Assad is too much of a pussy to risk being wiped out (and wiped out he will be if he tries anything) simply to prove a point, so if we can talk the Izzies into playing possum for a bit, we have a fair chance of avoiding a conflagration in the Levant. It’s not a cert, nothing is, but it’s better odds than the “let the Izzies do the bombing for us” option, much better.

Nor are the Egyptians likely to give up their massive U.S. Aid and lucrative arrangements with us unless provoked to the point where they have to respond.

Furthermore, we have a very high probability of being able to do it effectively, based on our available bases, materiel and personnel.

Staging it from Iraq would be the easiest way, I agree, but we won’t have to. The SpecOps team can stage from numerous other locations close to the action, including a carrier group. Close enough for SpecOps, yet far enough away to be safe from Iranian countermeasures. Of course, given the nature of SpecOps, there’s always the possibility that we COULD stage it from Iraq without anybody knowing it until after the shooting stopped.

Doing it ourselves would still carry a risk of a major conflagration, but the speed and force with which we can project a shock and awe campaign on the targets, it may well be too late for anybody to do anything once they wake up from their stupor. At any rate, worst case we’ll end up in the same situation that we’d end up with for CERTAIN if we do nothing and force the Israelis to act.

So yes, 2006 promises to be interesting. We’ll know for sure before April.