This isn't the first time I thought I saw signs of a pending attack. May seemed likely for a bit. And the fall of 2005. And August 2004. And spring 2004. And before that, I would not have been shocked at December 2004. Excuse me if I don't take the time to link to all of my embarassing failures on this question.
So it does not come as a shock to me that our statement that Iran has some time to think about our latest conditional offer (I haven't checked today. We haven't backed away from that yet have we?):
Asked what would happen if Iran did not accept, Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily: "This will be discussed within the framework of the G8. Iran has until the world economic summit in July to think it over."
The G8 summit will be held in St. Petersburg, Russia, on July 15-17. Iran's nuclear ambitions are expected to be one of the main topics of discussion.
The comments represent the first explicit deadline for Iran to respond to the offer.
So Iran has July to answer. But would our allies have agreed to an attack and hopefully regime change if Iran does not agree to stop/suspend Uranium enrichment? Or do we then have to talk to our allies some more about the next step? Or even talk to the Russians and Chinese, God forbid?
So I connected dots without connections. One of the perils of assuming intelligence can predict future events with clarity. Had we attacked any time in the last year or so, there would have been those signs that I saw that in retrospect, "predicted" the attack.
And I can't rule out that we are desensitizing the Iranians to our military and other preparations so that when we ramp up for the assault it may be mistaken for yet another routine move. We did this with Saddam prior to March 2003.
Nor can I rule out that we have no plan and are just stumbling along taking the next logical step while hoping that something will happen to solve our problem before we have to make the fateful decision to go to war again in some form.
Lesser mortals might have lost hope by now that we plan to stop Iran from getting nukes. In the end, I still do assume that Iran won't negotiate away their nukes and more importantly, that we won't accept a mullah-run Iran with nukes.
And I still remember that September will see the weather get better for a possible intervention in Iran. That's when Iraq invaded Iran back in 1980, recall.
