Britain is threatening to refer Iran to the UN Security Council, of which it is a permanent member, over it’s decision to remove IAEA seals from at least one research centre to resume work. Overnight, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan commented that…

“Any resumption of enrichment and reprocessing activities would be a further violation of Iran’s agreements with the Europeans. Such steps would be a serious escalation of the nuclear issue.”

What makes this issue worrisome, in my opinion, is not the lopsided rationality being employed by the world’s foremost nuclear powers, or their seemingly endless drive to force Iran’s hand in an attempt to justify sanctions in hopes of eliciting some sort of response that may very well justify much more. What worries me the most is the fact that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is no less idiotic than his counterpart in Washington.

While the prospect of engaging Iran is creeping through the halls of the Pentagon, their Iranian counterparts are no less active in conversation about their options were an international force to take preemptive action against them. And, well removed from the scheming of these dark covens, the people that will ultimately pay the price for the folly of blowhards sleep and work unknowingly the living dead. As demonstrated in Iraq in the 1990’s, even UN sanctions, coupled with corruption, have the ability to kill millions.

Despite the fact that the United States is militarily ensconced just across the border in Iraq, their options are obviously extremely militarily limited. Preemptive action against Iran runs the risk of alienating Shia groups in Southern Iraq and widening the conflict. Were that to occur, the US and Britain would not only find themselves facing the substantial conventional military power of Iran, but still fighting the insurgency. It would, without question, require a far greater military commitment, one that would most assuredly result in the first military draft in the United States since Vietnam. That, in itself, would have disastrous domestic consequences for this administration, which is already swimming in scandal.

Beyond sanctions there is the use of air strikes against Iranian targets, which also induces the possibility of eliciting a response from Iran and providing enough substantiality to ward off the inevitable ‘boy who cried wolf’ syndrome that would most certainly plague US and British coalition building results.

Brass tacks – there is no doubt that the invasion of Iraq would not have happened had Saddam Hussein possessed a nuclear deterrent, a point that is certainly not lost on the Iranian government. Then again, the fact that preemption is one of the cornerstones of the Bush Doctrine shouldn’t be lost on them either.