IF THE GRAND AYATOLLAH WON'T FIX THE PROBLEM THEN WE'LL HAVE TO:

German media: U.S. preparing Iran strike (Martin Walker, December 30, 2005, UPI )

The Bush administration is preparing its NATO allies for a possible military strike against suspected nuclear sites in Iran in the New Year, according to German media reports, reinforcing similar earlier suggestions in the Turkish media.

The Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel this week quoted "NATO intelligence sources" who claimed that the NATO allies had been informed that the United States is currently investigating all possibilities of bringing the mullah-led regime into line, including military options. This "all options are open" line has been President George W Bush's publicly stated policy throughout the past 18 months.

But the respected German weekly Der Spiegel notes "What is new here is that Washington appears to be dispatching high-level officials to prepare its allies for a possible attack rather than merely implying the possibility as it has repeatedly done during the past year."

The German news agency DDP cited "Western security sources" to claim that CIA Director Porter Goss asked Turkey's premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan to provide political and logistic support for air strikes against Iranian nuclear and military targets.

The dirty little secret is that Iran's Sunni neighbors have the most to fear from a nuclear-armed Shi'ite fanatic like Ahmadinejad.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 30, 2005 2:31 PM