From The Black Agenda Report
By Glen Ford

Tom Engelhardt, the prolific intellectual engine of the Nation Institute’s daily column TomDispatch, recently predicted that the Bush administration won’t attack Iran because…well, because they’re too sensible to launch such a mad enterprise. In a July 9 piece titled “Why Cheney Won’t Take Down Iran,” Engelhardt acknowledged the many signs that point towards an air assault on the world’s fourth biggest oil exporter by the United States, Israel or both. “Given the Bush administration’s ‘preventive war’ doctrine,” wrote Engelhardt, “which has opened the way for the launching of wars without significant notice or obvious provocation, and the penchant of its officials to ignore reality, all of this should frighten anyone”

Then Engelhardt rolled off some of the many reasons the U.S., for its own good, should not wage war on Iran: the “global shock” of $300-$400 per barrel oil, “$12 gas at the pump”; International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei’s warning that a military strike “would turn the region into a fireball”; last year’s revolt of U.S. generals and spies, who conspired to undercut the administration’s rationale for an Iran attack; and doubts among the chattering classes as to Dick Cheney’s clout in the last months of George Bush’s regime.

Engelhardt tends to believe that “the weight of reality” and the strategic presence of more “adults in the room” have brought a degree of sanity to the Bush gang, and that Karl Rove’s 2002 declaration, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality” is no longer operative in the White House. “Are they still capable of creating ‘their own reality’ and imposing it, however briefly, on the planet,” asks Engelhardt? “Every tick upwards in the price of oil says no. Every day that passes makes an attack on Iran harder to pull off.”

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