Above the Tide of Hours

From the vantage point of North East Asia, Iran serves as North Korea's outer perimeter. Breach that, you're one step closer to bloody conflict on the peninsula, a moderately severe catastrophe in itself, but also a trigger for a jittery arms race between Japan and China. Step one: The US attacks Iran, with or without nuclear weapons in such a way as to shut down its nuclear program, e.g., a heavy assault. Step two: North Korea speeds its development of both nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles to maximum, including test-firing several more long-range rockets over Japan (the only direction open, actually, for testing). Step three: The Japanese turn their attention to the construction of bombs and delivery vehicles, to prove their deterrent capacity. Step four: The Chinese, in view of the fact that their missiles easily could be wiped out on the launch-pad by technically advanced adversaries, plow significant resources into a next-generation nuclear arsenal. Not a stalemate, not a Mexican standoff, but a real live arms race.

Collateral damage includes a slowdown of China's economy, restrictions on foreign investment in China, heightened tension over Taiwan, an increase in the stature of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (Russia plus China and others not in the US ambit) as an arbiter of regional security, among other negatives.

Odds? Hard to calculate, but you can bet the Chinese have polished up their abacuses working on it. And if any US diplomats have figured this out I'd very much like to know how they intend to disconnect Iran from North Korea. My working assumption is that they can't.

So on top of $200 a barrel oil, a world-wide recession, even worse chaos all over the middle east, and soured relations with our allies, the Tyrant and his cross-eyed cronies would be walking up to a confrontation with another real power. The corporado class must be having regular nightmares about negative profits...

To bust through such constraints would take an uncommonly determined political effort, far more than required for Iraq—indeed, beyond anything we've yet seen. Unless and until the Tyrant goes into a full-tilt war footing the net result of mad-bomber Bolton's and others' sabre-rattling is merely high(er) oil prices, and we know who wins with that.

Oh, did I forget to mention the US 'ultimatum' to Iran? Like so much else out of Washington these many years, Kabuki theater, at best. Nevertheless, we must remain vigilant and vocal in our opposition to US war-mongering.