Dick Cheney once again is flexing his phenomenal abilities to blow the tradition of philosophy away by proving a positive with a negative, as he today asserted that Iran is likely to be developing nuclear weapons. Cheney’s evidence? The National Intelligence Estimate that declared that they likely were not.

Speaking in Oman, a U.S.-allied Arab monarchy and neighbor of Iran’s, Cheney told ABC News, “The important thing to keep in mind is the objective that we share with many of our friends in the region, and that is that a nuclear-armed Iran would be very destabilizing for the entire area.”

“What it (the NIE) says is that they have definitely had in the past a program to develop a nuclear warhead; that it would appear that they stopped that weaponization process in 2003. We don’t know whether or not they’ve restarted,” he said.

“What we do know is that they had then, and have now, a process by which they’re trying to enrich uranium, which is the key obstacle they’ve got to overcome in order to have a nuclear weapon,” he added. “They’ve been working at it for years.”

In sum, Cheney is reminding us that Iran has the intention of being a nuclear armed power. He just wants to make sure everybody keeps their powder dry. Surely, stirring up a proper brew of fear to inebriate world opinion and get it more compliant toward taking a hard line against Iran has nothing to do with it.

One would almost think that Cheney is ignorant of the new round of sanctions likely to pass against Iran - sanctions that are to be imposed due to increasingly stringent levels of review applied to the nation. Iran’s shady behavior in the past, such as it is, has merited thorough international attention, and that is what it’s getting. Not much of the American public is aware of this. Surely, Cheney is. Nevertheless, to hear him tell it, Oman and the Arab states good - read: stable enough due to dictatorial control of their people - enough to provide us with bases are the last line against an unfettered beast with an appetite for kilotonnage.

This may seem like not much concern now, but bear in mind the timing, as I mentioned in my prior post about Iraq: The surge is dwindling. This is fortuitous timing. For Iran, it means an opportunity to try to reassert its manipulation of Shia militia elements that it critically lost touch with during the Shia shoot-out between our pals, the Sadr militias, and the pro-Iranian Hakim clans. For the US, it means reminding the American voter who the enemy is, and getting them ready and champing at the bit in case the force needs to be racheted up.