To any intelligence analyst, it should be obvious that the United States has already embarked on a psychological warfare (psywar) campaign to keep Iran on tenterhooks in the hope of thereby breaking its will to resist US pressure to agree to the dismantling of its uranium enrichment capability.
It is in this context that one has to view the rhetoric of "no option excluded" coming at regular intervals from President George W Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other US leaders, orchestrated leaks to the media of Pakistan's cooperation with the US in a possible covert action against Iran's military nuclear capability, of increasing Israeli contacts with Pakistan, of US drones (unmanned surveillance planes) flying unhindered over Iran's nuclear establishments from bases in Iraq, and the latest reports of a mysterious blast near the southern port city of Dailam in Iran on Wednesday.
Iranian leaders would be making a serious miscalculation - as Saddam Hussein of Iraq did - if they underestimated the determination of not only the US, but also of Israel, to see that Iran does not acquire a capability for the production of nuclear weapons.
It would be a serious mistake on the part of Iranian leaders and policymakers to think that the disastrous consequences of the US-led military intervention in Iraq and pressure from the rest of the world - with even the United Kingdom reportedly hesitant to go whole hog with the United States in the case of Iran, as it did in the case of Iraq - would deter any US military or paramilitary action against Iran, despite undoubted difficulties.
Asia Times