Is Bush walking into Iran's trap?

David Ignatius asks the real question about how Bush/Cheney are dealing with the Iran situation.

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates -- Is the United States going to war with Iran? That's what a Lebanese businessman here wants to know from a visiting American. If it's war, he doesn't want to make a big new investment in the region.

You hear versions of this same question throughout the Middle East, as Washington and Tehran escalate their campaign of threats and counter threats. President Bush's loose talk of World War III doesn't seem to be deterring the Iranians, but it's scaring the heck out of America's allies in the region. Some talk as if war is almost inevitable.

Slow down, everybody. The Bush administration should stop issuing warnings and ultimatums that could force military action. Iran should get the message that the West -- including Russia -- is serious about stopping Iran from producing nuclear weapons.

If we look at what's going on behind the scenes in the two capitals, we can begin to disentangle the strands of this crisis. First, the military option: Despite all the saber rattling from Bush and Vice President Cheney, the United States doesn't have good military choices now -- and the Iranians know it. That's one reason they are being so provocative; they believe that a U.S. military strike would hurt America more than Iran.

Here's how one Gulf official sums up the problems with use of force against Iran: "When you look at it seriously, what's the objective and what are the consequences? People talk about a bombing campaign, but in six weeks of bombing in the Gulf War in 1991, you didn't take out the [Iraqi] Scud missiles. If the Iranians fire a missile across the Gulf, what happens to the price of oil? Or suppose they sink a tanker in the Gulf. And then they have Hezbollah, they have sleeper cells. What is your target?"

Many Arabs argue that the Iranians actually want America to attack. Politically, that would help the hard-liners rally support. And militarily, it would lure the United States onto a battlefield where its immense firepower wouldn't do much good. The Iranians could withdraw into the maze of their homeland and keep firing off their missiles -- exacting damage on the West's economy and, most important, its will to fight.

So the U.S. sounds more and more bellicose, but any military attack will lead to exactly the kind of war the Muslims are good at - asymmetric war against a western force.

Such a war would also strengthen an Iranian government that is having severe problems at home. So David Ignatius suggests exactly what seems obvious to me.

Military action would be irrational for both sides. But that doesn't mean it won't happen. I wish the Bush administration could see that with each step it takes closer to conflict, it is walking toward a well-planned trap.

I really wish Bush could see the likely future outcomes of military action in Iran as clearly as the Iranian leadership appears to do. But if 'clueless George' had that kind of foresight, the U.S. military wouldn't be in Iraq today, would it?