"They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something [America] would be forced to retaliate for."

The Bush Administration is definitely turning up the heat. They don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons. The question is, how committed are they to that goal? Iran and the US are locked in a game of chicken. Iran, so far, has shown no willingness to back down. The signs are pretty clear that we are moving down a road.

From Bush Puzzled by Doubters:

And Correntewire blogger Lambert points out a passage I overlooked in DeYoung's article in the Sunday Washington Post.

DeYoung wrote: "Some senior administration officials still relish the notion of a direct confrontation. One ambassador in Washington said he was taken aback when John Hannah, Vice President Cheney's national security adviser, said during a recent meeting that the administration considers 2007 'the year of Iran' and indicated that a U.S. attack was a real possibility. Hannah declined to be interviewed for this article."

That New Yorker article is interesting, you don't hear much about the effect of the Iran sanctions.