Terror!

Terror alert!

As tensions increase between the United States and Iran, U.S. intelligence and terrorism experts say they believe Iran would respond to U.S. military strikes on its nuclear sites by deploying its intelligence operatives and Hezbollah teams to carry out terrorist attacks worldwide.

Iran would mount attacks against U.S. targets inside Iraq, where Iranian intelligence agents are already plentiful, predicted these experts. There is also a growing consensus that Iran's agents would target civilians in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, they said...

Former CIA terrorism analyst Paul R. Pillar said that any U.S. or Israeli airstrike on Iranian territory "would be regarded as an act of war" by Tehran, and that Iran would strike back with its terrorist groups. "There's no doubt in my mind about that. . . . Whether it's overseas at the hands of Hezbollah, in Iraq or possibly Europe, within the regime there would be pressure to take violent action."

How does one respond to this kind of crap? This is the main headline on the WaPo online site. How did this get set up? What is the reason for this article? Is it further election-year fear-mongering by the US administration? Is it to demonize Iran further? Is it to set up an excuse for massive use of force by the US? Is it an excuse not to attack Iran? This is the kind of article that appears politically-placed within the media. It smells like a dead fish.

Yes, I'm sure Iran would indeed respond. No kidding - that's what countries do when they're attacked, and their sovereignty violated. Since head-to-head conventional battle is pretty much nullified by the US' spending as much as the rest of the world combined on the military, the only option when the US attacks your country is to respond by unconventional means. There's a pretty clear logic here. If the US wishes to avoid further terrorist attacks, it ought not to attack, invade, occupy, or destabilize other countries.

After all, the US has been making noise against Iran for decades, and Iran has been involved in covert operations for decades. An attack on Iran would turn the administration's "war on terror" into an all-out conflict that the American administration does not have the competence nor even the domestic and international opinion on its side to defeat.

Both sides have increased their activities against the other. The Bush administration is spending $75 million to step up pressure on the Iranian government, including funding non-governmental organizations and alternative media broadcasts. Iran's parliament then approved $13.6 million to counter what it calls "plots and acts of meddling" by the United States.

"Given the uptick in interest in Iran" on the part of the United States, "it would be a very logical assumption that we have both ratcheted up [intelligence] collection, absolutely," said Fred Barton, a former counterterrorism official who is now vice president of counterterrorism for Stratfor, a security consulting and forecasting firm. "It would be a more fevered pitch on the Iranian side because they have fewer options."

And an unnamed European analyst:

Iran "certainly wants to remind governments that they can create a lot of difficulty if strikes were to occur," said a senior European counterterrorism official interviewed recently. "That they might react with all means, Hezbollah inside Lebanon and outside Lebanon, this is certain. Al-Qaeda could become a tactical alliance."

The upshot is that we have an administration that continues to dig the hole its already in deeper and deeper. You know what happens when you do that: you end up in China.