i am the very thing you pretend to be

on the way to the garden

the garden is breathing out the air of paradise
today. i can sense myself, and this lively wine,
and this friend whose nature approaches the divine.

it's all right if the beggar claims to be a king
today. his tent is a shadow thrown by a cloud;
his banqueting hall is a newly sown field.

paradise is here in the simple tale that the may
meadow tells; the wise person lets the future
and its profits go, and accepts the cash now.

please don't imagine that your enemy will ever
be faithful to you. the candle the hermit lights
will always flutter out in the worldly church.

make your soul strong then by letting it drink
the secret wine. this rotten world has its own
plans to press our dust into bricks.

- hafez

Another piece by George Friedman of Stratfor called Mediterranean Flyover: Telegraphing an Israeli Punch? which provides a few tasty morsels for the inner geopolitical geek in us all. The whole concept of either Israel , US or both attacking Iran has fueled a great deal of speculation about what they are going to do and increasing instability. I think the article takes a more pragmatic look at what might going on and also hints at the inner conflict within Iran itself as it tries to cement what it perceives as a new hegemony in the region and how evolves as a nation. Also we see the flip side to Iran acting crazy from the previous post to Israel engaged in act of misdirection to keep the Iranians on guard and paranoid. The net effect of this is that it's doubtful anything will happen soon and will keep the fires of speculation going. This is one high stakes pissing match.

Finally, the Israelis and Americans might not be intending an attack at all. Rather, they are — as the Iranians have said — engaged in psychological warfare for political reasons. The Iranians appear to be split now between those who think that Ahmadinejad has led Iran into an extremely dangerous situation and those who think Ahmadinejad has done a fine job. The prospect of an imminent and massive attack on Iran could give his opponents ammunition against him. This would explain the Iranian government response to the reports of a possible attack — which was that such an attack was just psychological warfare and could not happen. That clearly was directed more for internal consumption than it was for the Israelis or Americans.

We tend toward this latter theory. Frankly, the Bush administration has been talking about an attack on Iran for years. It is hard for us to see that the situation has changed materially over the past months. But if it has, then either Israel or the United States would have attacked — and not with front-page spreads in The New York Times before the attack was launched. In the end, we tend toward the view that this is psychological warfare for the simple reason that you don't launch a surprise attack of the kind necessary to take out Iran's nuclear program with a media blitz beforehand. It just doesn't work that way.