sigh

I already know the answer to this question, but...what can be done about this?

[W]e’ve probably been executing military operations inside Iran for at least 18 months. The evidence is overwhelming.

...

The House Committee on Emerging Threats tried to have a hearing some weeks ago in which they asked the Department of State and Defense to come and answer this question because it’s serious enough to be answered without congressional approval, and they didn’t come to the hearing. There are sources that I have talked to on the Hill who believe that that’s true and that it’s being done without congressional oversight.

...

Number one, we have learned from TIME Magazine today that some U.S. naval forces had been alerted for deployment. That is a major step. That’s first. Second thing is the sources suggest the plan that’s not in the Pentagon. The plan has gone to the White House. That’s not normal planning. When the plan goes to the White House, that means we’ve gone to a different state.

I guess the short answer is, nothing can be done about it. I can’t decide which will effectively end our relationship with the rest of the world first—this, or our deciding the Geneva Conventions don’t apply to us. Geneva has had the upper hand for a while, but unprovoked war with Iran is gaining ground quickly.

And there’s nothing we can do about it.

Well, hopefully Jonathan Singer is right...though the odds of this aren't nearly as high as I wish they were. Our only hope is that Americans say enough is enough.

Leaving aside the fact that it would be terrible policy for America to initiate war with Iran at this juncture, this move could prove political suicide for the GOP. On the most surface level, the prospect of an expanding regional conflict between Iran and the United States would almost undoubtedly raise the price of oil (and thus the consumer's bill at the pump). But it would also play directly into voters' concerns about Republicans.

Polling released over the last couple of months has shown that while voters harbor some concerns that a Democratic victory in Congressional elections in November will weaken America's ability to combat terrorism, many more worry that a Republican majority would overextend the US military and get the US involved in too many military operations. While Republicans have trotted out the "Democrats are weak on terror" card so often that it is losing its effectiveness, new developments in US-Iranian relations indicate that voters' worries about the continuation of Republican control might already be coming to fruition today.

Then again, the more likely response from American voters is “I don’t like what Republicans are doing at all...but we’re at war, so I have to give them my support,” or something like that.

Meanwhile, I don’t think #3 on Tristero’s list would fall into the category of “surprise” at this point, would it? I mean...considering...

[T]the DOD has (naturally) been doing some analysis on airstrikes against Iran. The upshot of the analysis was that conventional bombardment would degrade the Iranian nuclear program by about 50 percent. By contrast, if the arsenal included small nuclear weapons, we could get up to about 80 percent destroying. In response to this, persons inside the Office of the Vice President took the view that we could use the nukes — in other words, launch an unprovoked nuclear first strike against Iran — and then simply deny that we’d done so. Detectable radiation in the area of the bombed sites would be attributed to the fact that they were, after all, nuclear facilities we’d just hit.