Drudge Report and Fox News both ran featured articles in the last 24 hours about former U.N. ambassador John Bolton’s statements suggesting that if Israel did not disable Iranian nuclear reactors within 72 hours, that they will have lost their chance. The comments seemed to be an attempt by Bolton, who is now a mainstream talking head, to incite a confrontation in the middle east. Of course, the chances that anyone will make a military decision based on Bolton’s opinions are almost nil. If Bolton is right, however, then we may soon be dealing with a nuclear Iran. And at that point, a preemptive attack becomes more complicated.

According to Gwynne Dyer, whether or not an attack happens now or later, there’s no way for the U.S. to win a non-nuclear war with Iran:

When Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the highest-ranking American officer, was asked recently on NBC’s Meet The Press whether the United States has a military plan for an attack on Iran, he replied simply: “We do.”

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But what the planning process will have revealed, in this case, is that there is no way for the United States to win a non-nuclear war with Iran.

The U.S. could “win” by dropping hundreds of nuclear weapons on Iran’s military bases, nuclear facilities and industrial centres (i.e. cities) and killing five to 10 million people, but short of that, nothing works. On this we have the word of Richard Clarke, counter-terrorism adviser in the White House under three administrations.

In the early 1990s, Clarke revealed in an interview with the New York Times four years ago, the Clinton administration had seriously considered a bombing campaign against Iran, but the military professionals told them not to do it.

“After a long debate, the highest levels of the military could not forecast a way in which things would end favourably for the United States,” he said. The Pentagon’s planners have war-gamed an attack on Iran several times in the past 15 years, and they just can’t make it come out as a U.S. victory.

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The problem is that there’s nothing the U.S. can do to Iran, short of nuking the place, that would really force Tehran to kneel and beg for mercy.

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There are some 80 million people in Iran, and although many of them don’t like the present regime they are almost all fervent patriots who would resist a foreign invasion. Iran is a mountainous country, and very big: four times the size of Iraq. The Iranian army currently numbers about 450,000 men, slightly smaller than the U.S. Army—but unlike the U.S. Army, it does not have its troops scattered across literally dozens of countries.

If this is truly the case, and conventional war game scenarios have come up empty, then this explains President Bush’s, Obama’s and the Israeli’s delays.

Though it would no doubt bode well for the military industrial complex, perhaps leaders of all states have, for now, decided to postpone military action, but fully realize that a conflict is inevitable at some point.

There may be a variety of reasons for this delay, most of which border on the conspiratorial idea that politics, economic crises, and wars are planned events and are controlled by global elites, i.e. “the powers that be.”

Perhaps the powers that be have yet to accomplish whatever goals need to be met prior to an Iranian invasion. According to Dyer, we can’t win a conventional war. So, that means any invasion of Iran will likely have to go nuclear. And if this is the case, then we’re talking about a serious possibility of World War III, and the powers that be may not be ready for that just yet.

The middle east theater of war would not be limited to just Iran. There are several other players, all of whom are nuclear, with skin in the game – and they may not be interested in the same goals as those who we might call TPTB.

North Korea may just decide that this would be a perfect opportunity to cross the DMZ and level South Korea, which it could probably due in a matter of hours or days. China may make a move to take over Taiwan. And then there’s Russia. The current leadership in Russia is from what one could call “the old school.” These were top players in the Russian KGB and political circles prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and don’t think for a second they’re not still pissed off about the U.S. winning the cold war. That and the fact that Western banks and financiers collapsed the ruble and nailed Russia for roughly $300 billion in losses in the late 90’s. And neither Russia or China is prepared to sit idly by while the US moves to control pretty much the entire middle east’s resources and minerals.

There is a lot that could go wrong with any conflict with Iran. If we know this, then so does the leadership in the US, Europe and Israel. If war game scenarios have, in fact, shown that we can’t win against Iran without going nuclear, then we can expect the US and other coalition countries to execute the attack with the nuclear first strike option. All hell may very well break loose – on a global scale.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.