The U.K. Telegraph (owned by rightwing felon Conrad Black and home to the despicable Con Coughlin, one of the most vicious salesmen of the Iraq War) is beating the Iran war drum again today. But why?

Is it because Bush has finally realized he cannot achieve "victory" in Iraq, but refuses to "redeploy" as John Murtha wants? Is Bush's only "exit strategy" for Iraq a massive "wag the dog" bombing of Iran?

The Telegraph makes clear the U.K. military is deeply worried that an attack on Iran would result in Shi'ite attacks on British troops near the Iranian borders in southern Iraq and in western Afghanistan.

One of the few sane reporters at the Pentagon Post, Dana Priest, says U.S. intelligence officials fear Iran would also attack Americans inside Iraq and around the world:

Iran would mount attacks against U.S. targets inside Iraq, where Iranian intelligence agents are already plentiful, predicted these experts. There is also a growing consensus that Iran's agents would target civilians in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, they said.

Bush and Blair have no good choices for dealing with Iran after their Iraq fiasco. That's why Bush said the fate of U.S. troops in Iraq will be decided by a future President. The only question is whether Bush and Blair make the next President's job even more difficult - perhaps even hopeless - by starting an unwinnable war with Iran.

Update 1: Tom Engelhardt describes the Iraq disaster with his unique brilliance:

So here's a future scenario to imagine: Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish troops all roaming urban neighborhoods, all engaging in revenge killings against the others, all with their own American advisors. It is no longer beyond the bounds of possibility that Americans could find themselves on every side of a future civil war; or, no less likely, that all sides could be attacking American troops -- or both; and so, of course, could the Iranians whom the Bush administration, in another catch-22, threatens to attack and yet desperately needs...

It's true that some neocons once imagined chaos as a kind of acceptable fallback position in the Middle East, if the best of all worlds didn't work out. But this was the fantasy of people who had essentially never made it out of the Washington world of think tanks, punditry, and politics, who were desperately ready to be dazzled by the tales of Ahmed Chalabi and other exiled Iraqi Scheherazades. Anyone today who thinks that we can simply retreat to those permanent bases and protect the oil, while Iraq sinks further into chaos, while the ruins spread, should really think again.

"Imperial overreach" is too fancy a term for what the Bush administration has actually done. While its officials have talked a great game when it came to achieving "victory" in Iraq and exporting democracy to the Middle East, its main exports have turned out to be mayhem and ruins. And those it can continue to export. With every new move, yet more rubble, yet more terror, and undoubtedly yet more terrorists in Iraq and, sooner or later, in the wider region will be created. This is where the most essential choices made by the President, Vice President, and their chosen officials in the days after September 11, 2001 have taken us.

Update 2: emptywheel elaborates on the "harm and pain" Iran might inflict on the US if we were to attack its nuclear program, including using its navy to close the Straits of Hormuz, through which 80% of the oil refined in the Persian Gulf region makes its way onto the world markets. She notes that John Bolton's anti-Iran diplomacy at the U.N. is failing miserably to divide Russia and China from Iran.