As if there were not enough, there is a bitter history. Americans are currently commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the beginning of the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-80.

President Bush’s rhetoric toward Iran has been strikingly similar to his rhetoric in the run-up to war against Iraq. For example (July 2004): “They’re harboring al-Qaida leadership there. And we’ve asked that they be turned over to their respective countries. Secondly, they’ve got a nuclear weapons program that they need to dismantle. We’re working with other countries to encourage them to do so. Thirdly, they’ve got to stop funding terrorist organizations such as Hizbullah that create great dangers in parts of the world.”

Now that the Bush administration is safely ensconced in a second term, the question of an assault on the Tehran regime is in play. At first glance, that may sound far-fetched. After all, the United States is currently engaged in a relentless war of attrition in Fallujah and other Iraqi cities, with no prospect of easy victory.

Moreover, as James Mann – author of Rise of the Vulcans: the history of Bush’s war cabinet (Viking, 2004) – writes in the journal Foreign Policy: “the reality is that the Bush administration will face a series of constraints – military, diplomatic, political, and economic – that will curb its ability to launch new preventive wars.”

Such precaution might infuse rationality and common sense in most administrations, but the current president and his advisors think in unusual terms. Ron Suskind, for example, reported that a White House senior advisor told him: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality” (New York Times, 17 October 2004). That is exactly what the administration has done in Iraq.

Military action – not necessarily an all-out ground invasion – against Iran may be unrealistic. It may not even be viable. Retired US air force colonel Sam Gardiner recently ran a war game for the Atlantic Monthy [November 2004 (subscription only)] and concluded: “After all this effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers. You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. And you have to make diplomacy work.”

But it would be a mistake to believe that such considerations make military action against Iran impossible. In September 2004, United Press International reported that the Special Operations Command of the United States military (Ussocom) had conducted war games practicing regime change in Iran. The plan involved not full-scale war but precision strikes combined with US special forces’ collaboration with Iranian dissidents – including the Mujahadeen e-Khalq (MEK) opposition group, dropped from the state department’s list of terrorist organisations only two months earlier.

If this sounds like “déjà vu all over again” – it is: essentially a scaled-back variation of the war plan for Iraq, with the MEK in place of the Iraqi National Congress. And unlike Saddam Hussein’s Iraq there is actually a real democratic movement in Iran. So, advocates of military action will argue, the United States won’t have actually to occupy the country to create democracy in the country.

Colin Powell – still secretary of state, and still considered by many the only moderating force in the administration – told the Financial Times (9 November 2004) that President Bush won a mandate to continue to pursue an “aggressive” foreign policy and that “the president is not going trim his sails and pull back.”

President Bush himself has said that United States foreign policy in his second term will continue to focus on “(promoting) freedom and democracy”. Whatever else one thinks of Bush as president, he says what he means and means what he says. He should be taken at his word. No one should assume that spreading freedom and democracy begins and ends with Iraq.