We're getting a bit closer to the blinking contest:

The Post notes that Iran, as a major oil producer, is in a good position to play hardball with the West: "Iran is feeling emboldened in the region and the Security Council is juggling a multitude of crises in the Middle East, including the Iraq war and recent fighting in southern Lebanon."

The NYT suggests that Iran may be trying to work out an arrangement whereby it keeps the enrichment program but with safeguards to ensure no nuclear material goes to a weapons program, and that Tehran believes it could get China and Russia to support that compromise. But the Post says Iran may be willing to deal, and cites Iranian sources as saying Tehran would freeze the program if it got assurances that Washington was dealing in earnest and was not trying to engage in regime change on the sly.

In one corner, we have the U.S. and it's "allies" who don't want a nuclear Iran. In the other corner, we have Iran with who rightly fears a Bushian policy in the middle east and who has been well trained in the need for a nuclear weapon in order to avoid the U.S. bully. And please. Don't believe any nonsense about an agreement that preserves enrichment while keeping materials away from arms development. Iran has learned one of the most important lessons of diplomacy in the last six years: if you have a nuke, you're much much safer than if you don't. Any such agreement will inevitably be "broken" and exist merely as a stalling tactic.

As the deadline approaches, 8/31, it will be interesting to see who blinks. Given Iran's position as the third largest oil producer in the world and major supplier to China, and given how Cheney has proven the impotence of American military power, I don't see Iran giving an inch.

This leaves a glaring question. Will Bush blink? Good sense, diplomatic intelligence and leadership would suggest he should. And of course, these are all the reasons why it's unlikely he will.

In the end, it looks to me like brinksmanship right up to airplanes, loaded with bombs, moving into takeoff position. When neither side sees that it has nothing to "lose", war becomes a much greater likelihood. Neither care about the loss of innocent life. Bush can't get anymore disliked politically unless the schizophrenic wards turn against him. Iran knows it can ultimately win a military confrontation with the west after throwing a gernade into the west's economy with oil embargos.

War it seems, is a likelihood that, without some major western concession, seems inevitable.

As an aside, it's probably no accident that 2,500 retired marines were drafted .... yes I said drafted .... back into the military to go to the middle east. There has been no drawdown of troops and in fact we are increasing the numbers. Anyone with a brain in the Pentagon knows that an attack on Iraq would mean increased attacks on American's in Iraq.