Is Iran Next?

Over at the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh is reporting that forces in the Bush Administration are looking at war with Iran now.

"This is a war against terrorism, and iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone," the former high-level intelligence official told me. "Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign."

Preparations include new war plans and fairly open hints by the Vice President that Israel start the Iran War by attacking its weapons productions facilities.

Hersh also reports that the Pentagon is now doing the secret "special ops" operations that used to be performed by the CIA. This isn't just a change in uniform: after the CIA was caught trying to overthrow governments and assasinating world leaders, the agency was put under congressional oversight. The Pentagon doesn't have that oversight. Followup in today's New York Times:

Among the C.I.A.'s concerns, former intelligence officials have said, are that an expanded Pentagon role in intelligence-gathering could, by design or effect, escape the strict Congressional oversight imposed by law on such operations when they are carried out by intelligence agencies.

This isn't a war on terrorism (neither iraq or Iran have conducted terrorist operations against the United States). This is a war against Muslim nations that threaten to have too much power.