Yipe. I've been having waking nightmares for the better part of nine months now about what happens when it comes down to brass tacks in Iran. I laughed off Trent Telenko's notion that they were going to use the unit-cycling period of this spring to cover an Iranian invasion. But then came all of these rumors of a "spring offensive" in Pakistan, which is covering troop movements into Afghanistan, and the conservative/reformer showdown seems to be coming to a full head, with the younger Khatami calling for the end of theocracy, and the mullahs surpressing reformist newspapers.

I'm afraid that either Bush is up to something covert, sneaky, and totally reckless, or we're about to see a large-scale slaughter of unsupported, democratically-minded Iranian reformers. I am totally at a loss to guess which I'd prefer. A massacre would represent a horrible strategic defeat; a sudden and unprepared plunge into Iranian intervention in an election year would be chaos incarnate. The only scenarios I can construct that would result in positive results all bear more resemblance to a bad Tom Clancy novel than what I recognize as reality.

All thanks to the Allahpundit, who is becoming an excellent news-aggregator when he isn't playing blasphemous comic lightning-rod.