At this point, it is becoming increasingly evident that the broader Middle East - Iran to Israel - is gearing up for war. Every major party is flashing their guns and talking loud. And with the situation in Iraq continuing to circle the drain - thanks in no small part to Iran’s intervention there - the value to the West of winning back some strategic cred by putting a thermobaric boot to Iran’s nuclear program is climbing.

It has been an interesting waltz to say the least. While it had been fomenting for awhile, tracking the events of this September alone shows how each side is using the actions of the other to escalate, all the while speaking as though they want only peace.

The month began with an ill-timed olive branch - a gesture by the ailing Ahmadinajad government to suggest it isn’t the vitriolic monstrosity that the West and its own inflammatory rhetoric has suggested it to be: They announced the opening of a Jewish center in Tehran. As with Bush’s AIDS relief entitlement, nobody abroad really noticed this sign of compassion, and most of those that did considered it fake. Multi-culti Mullahs are hard to swallow, I admit. Then again, we create the future we decide to believe in.

Keeping that same principle in mind, it was vocally announced that the Pentagon had drafted up a warplan to comprehensively annihilate Iran’s major military installations in a “three day blitz.” The plan itself isn’t nearly as significant as the announcement of it. We draw up plans to powderize our adversaries quite often. Rarely do we make sure everyone in the world knows. And, as with the build-up to war with Iraq, we heard from a familiar cast of characters:

First, the IAEA, whose measured and conservative reports of improvement seem just tailored to offend the five-minute-news, shock-scare-drunk sensibilities of American audiences:

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week reported “significant” cooperation with Iran over its nuclear programme and said that uranium enrichment had slowed. Tehran has promised to answer most questions from the agency by November, but Washington fears it is stalling to prevent further sanctions. Iran continues to maintain it is merely developing civilian nuclear power

And from the Achmed Chalabi du jour: “Resistance fighters” who, though they have likely not been back to their country since cellphones weighted eight pounds, claim their intelligence is most accurate:

Alireza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which uncovered the existence of Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, said the IAEA was being strung along. “A number of nuclear sites have not even been visited by the IAEA,” he said. “They’re giving a clean bill of health to a regime that is known to have practised deception.”

What isn’t mentioned is that these sleuths-in-exile are listed by us as a Foreign Terrorist Organization - an inconvenient classification when you’re using them as a public justification for possible military action.

Iran’s response was to announce that they’re not the only ones with WMD in the region, pointing their finger squarely at Israel.

He indicated that countries like Syria, Lebanon and Egypt have been reluctant to join the Organisation of the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) mainly due to the Israeli stance. Israel has signed the Chemical Weapons Convention but has not ratified it yet.

Again, this attitude may sound like more Zionist-bashing, but when dealing with the actions of other nations, it’s best to consider things from their perspective. The score board reads clear to Iran:

Attacks on Iran - 2
Attacks by Iran (publicly) - 0
Wars started by Israel - 4
Wars won by Israel - 5

So, if you were faced with that kind of an opponent, maybe you wouldn’t be so far off the mark by declaring they’re dangerous. But the US’ strategic interests aren’t seen as being furthered by having a balance of WMD power in the Middle East, and so everybody outside the Arab world ignored this and bit their nails about the amount of centrifuges Iran has - which is, according to some sources, quite a bit.

No more than a day later, Israeli jets slashed through Syrian airspace to the Iranian border, dropped munitions and withdrew. The world journalistic community is still scratching its head as to what this meant. Some have theorized that it was to deter the Syrians from enhancing their WMD arsenal, particularly with nuclear assistance from North Korea, who was spotted delivering materials to them. The most likely explanation, however, is the most obvious: Israel was testing to see how a bombing run against Iran would work out.

“Of course Israel wants to let the Americans do that,” said Ephraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

“But if we are left alone, the Israeli army is preparing to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat - if the political level allows it to - and this could have been a part of that.”

Nothing was done to quell the tensions surrounding this technical act of war. Instead, the rest of the West stepped to the fore to flex its might against Iran. France, which has a firm financial stake in Iran but which also has a fairly anti-Muslim leader, directly threatened force from its highest office if Iran didn’t demonstrate full compliance with international bodies in regulating its nuclear program. Sarkozy himself issued the statements, and they were more for the sake of the US and Israel than any Gallic agitation with Iran:

Sarkozy’s comments might well have been intended to alert Tehran that the leaders of US and Israel regard the so-called US-Iran nuclear standoff as an international problem that requires urgent solution.

Furthermore, US intelligence stated that Hizballah would likely launch an offensive against the US if Iran or its interests threatened. Mind you that this is the same group that the White House was, not long ago, immediately afraid of obtaining a nuclear device to use against us. And again, the significance of this isn’t the report itself, but the release of the report. In military diplomacy, statements are part of the arsenal. Specifically, they’re the trigger.

Iran mulled this over for awhile. France was the only one really keeping the rhetoric high, largely because Sarkozy wants to restore its military and diplomatic prestige. Then Iran issued a statement that, if Israel attacked it, it would respond with bombing.

“We have drawn up a plan to strike back at Israel with our bombers if this regime (Israel) makes a silly mistake,” Iran’s deputy air force commander, Gen. Mohammad Alavi, said in an interview with the semiofficial Fars news agency.

Trusting that the American public had forgotten about the Israeli jets breaking into Syrian airspace and bombing on Iran’s border - or simply did not care - the US issued a counter statement calling Iran’s comments “unprovoked” and “almost provocative”, “bellicose and hateful language“, and so forth. They also said, in the same breath, that the US is not taking military options off of the table when considering how to deal with Iran.

And, all across America, worried citizens came home from their 9-to-5, glanced at the one-minute spot about Iran’s latest bluster and the grim response from the US, and lost a bit more hair or sleep.

Things have only become more tense. Analysts are now talking about how Syria’s considering the Golan Heights to be a militarily viable target. More speculation about North Korean involvement in the region bubbles about. And the visit of Iran’s President to the UN in the near future has politicians here snarling. He’s even been called “Iran’s Hitler” - actually a bit of an apt analogy, but important in this context primarily due to the fact that Saddam was compared to Hitler as well.

Just today, Israel showed the world that it’s at the ready, scrambling its jets for the press to ponder about and the radars of its regional enemies to marvel at.

Further evidence that it’s going to be a hot time in Tehran this winter can be found at this excellent article: 10 Indications That The U.S. Is Planning Military Action Against Iran.