The latest from Iran...

Last week, Iranian President Ahmadgitajob (I like that one...) promised that in 90 days, Iran would be fighting a two-front war. This story did not get a lot of press, and I was only able to find a few articles on the topic, but it is certainly worth discussing, don't you think?

Many "experts" (I'm not sure what an "expert" in this area is... they'd have to be board-certified shrinks to understand this guy, I figure) seem to think that Ahmadinejad meant to put the population of Iran on more of a "war footing", paving the way for an inevitable showdown with either the US or Israel over the nuclear development issue. This is certainly something he needs to do, because it seems that in the nearly 25 years after the Iran-Iraq war ended, Iran still hasn't completely rebuilt the towns and villages most effected by the Iraqi invasion. In fact, much of the worst protests that arose after Ahmadinejad's re-election started in these very areas, because of the failure of the Iranian government assist the people in rebuilding.

I'm curious about the "two-front" aspect of his words, though. Iran already has a sizable investment in the fighting across the Afghani border (as seen by the thousands of documents leaked recently), and that investment may grow in the coming weeks. Could the "second front" be Lebanon again? Given Ahmadinejad's words, if Israel were to see a rain of rockets fired from Lebanon in the coming weeks, I'd take that to mean Iran is behind the effort... even if Hezbollah takes the credit. After all, Hezbollah is nothing more than an Iranian "foreign legion" for Palestinian and Lebanese terrorists, right?

This is where Netanyahu is going to make a difference. He seems truly capable of the "diplomatic" outreach, and if he can garner any support or even sympathy from his Arab neighbors now, if and when the time comes for more shooting (especially in Lebanon), he won't be fighting the established governments as well as the terror brigades.

If Iran gets any closer to a real, functional nuclear device, and the US remains as ambivelant as it has in the last year about the danger (although I should give some credit to the much tougher stance that Obama and Co. have taken lately... any improvement is good, right?), then an Israeli strike at the nuclear development sites seems more likely, and I can't help but feel that a unilateral attack by Israel will be exactly what Ahmadinejad wants to swing Iranian public opinion in his favor. Nothing drums up patriotic fervor like an "unprovoked" attack, and the majority of Iranians support Iranian nuclear goals (as they understand them, anyway).

Every effort should be made by the US and Israel (and the EU and UK, too) to make sure that Iran's ability to project nuclear force is seen as an immediate threat by ALL Middle Eastern states, regardless of religious affiliations or ethnic ties. Perhaps this sort of "backdoor" policy is what the Obama White House is good at... I don't know... but if it won't confront Iran up-front, then it must do so in some other way.