Scotland on Sunday

THE ingredients most likely to spark confrontation between the United States and Iran could scarcely be simpler or more combustible: a tin filled with an explosive charge and a lump of copper is all that is needed to manufacture what the US military calls an Explosively Formed Penetrator (EFP).

When the device is triggered by an infrared sensor it fires a molten ball of metal at its target with sufficient speed to penetrate most American vehicles' armour. The consequences can be horrific.

Hezbollah routinely uses such devices against Israeli forces, leading the US to suspect Iran has been supplying Shi'ite militias in Iraq with the devices that have, according to one estimate, killed as many as 170 coalition troops in Iraq.

The use of EFPs doubled in Iraq last year, prompting the Bush administration to secretly approve measures to counter Iranian "meddling" in Iraq. As a result of that decision, in December, US troops raided the Baghdad offices of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Iraq's biggest political party and one that receives support from Tehran. That raid resulted in two arrests. Three weeks later the US arrested five more Iranians following a raid on an Iranian diplomatic office in the northern city of Irbil.

The Bush administration sees the hand of the Quds Force - the secret overseas operations directorate of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) - at work. "We know that the Quds Force is involved," defence secretary Robert Gates told reporters on Thursday. "We know the Quds Force is a paramilitary arm of the IRGC. So we assume that the leadership of the IRGC. knows about this. Whether or not more senior political leaders in Iran know about it, we don't know."

The bottom line is clear: "Iranian lethal support for select groups of Iraqi Shia militants clearly intensifies the conflict in Iraq," the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq states.

With his legacy on the line and facing a Congressional revolt against his Iraq policy, President George W Bush used a press conference this week to vow he would "do what is necessary" to protect American troops in Iraq. Though Bush said it was "preposterous" to accuse the administration of exaggerating the extent of Iran's destabilising influence in Iraq, the wounds caused by the intelligence debacle concerning Saddam Hussein's WMD programmes are still raw. The administration has used up its alloted share of the benefit of the doubt.

"The begging question of a smoking gun, of an Iranian standing over an American, with a gun, it's never going to happen," said a US analyst who briefed reporters on Iranian involvement in supplying military hardware in Iraq last week.

In Washington, however, the sense that America is preparing the ground for a military confrontation with the Iranians is growing steadily. The situation was tense when it was confined to Iran's nuclear ambitions; adding a growing rivalry for influence in Iraq to the mix makes the situation even more dangerous.

Some analysts in Washington go further still, suggesting that Bush is actively seeking an excuse to launch air strikes against Iran. "They [the White House] intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something [America] would be forced to retaliate for," said Hillary Mann, the administration's former National Security Council director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs.

Flynt Leverett, a former CIA official and Middle East expert at the National Security Council, accused the administration of trying to provoke an Iranian reaction by "setting the stage so that the odds are rapidly rising that Iran will eventually respond to provocations, like having diplomats arrested, having Iranian officials taken into custody and detained by American officials, having orders outstanding for US troops to kill or capture Iranians found in Iraq . . . Eventually, Iran will respond to that, and then the administration will have a casus belli [justification for acts of war]."

This was denied by Gates this week. "For the umpteenth time, we are not looking for an excuse to go to war with Iran," he said at a Pentagon briefing on Thursday. "We are not planning a war with Iran." Nonetheless, hawks and doves alike sense that the relationship between Washington and Tehran is, if anything, deteriorating.

Whatever their exact involvement in Iraq, Iran is flexing its muscles wherever it can, causing consternation among other countries in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia, who fear Iran's desire for regional supremacy.

Last week the Iranians completed a missile test near the Strait of Hormuz to remind the Americans that Tehran has military options too. Last November, the Iranians warned they could mine the straits through which no less than 20% of the world's oil supply passes en route to markets around the globe. Admiral William Fallon, the new head of US Central Command, told a Senate confirmation hearing earlier this month that it is clear the Iranians want to "deny us the ability to operate in this vicinity".

To guard against such an eventuality the US is moving a second aircraft carrier group to the region. By the end of the month the USS John C Stennis will have joined the USS Dwight Eisenhower on the Persian station.

For the first time since 2003 the US will have two carrier groups in the Persian Gulf. Though a land invasion of Iran would put an impossible strain on an already over-stretched army, air strikes against Iranian nuclear and command and control facilities could easily be launched from the carriers.

Washington has three broad policy options: engagement, containment and confrontation. While Democrats in Congress largely prefer a course based on cautious engagement designed to try to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions, the Bush administration's Iraq policy begins with containment and increasingly favours confrontation. If military action remains a last resort for hawks within the administration, it is a resort they are psychologically and temperamentally willing to reach quickly.

"I wish I could tell you that it is impossible," said Ken Pollack, a former CIA officer and author of The Persian Puzzle. "But I don't think it is. I think a war with Iran would be very messy and would cost us a lot more than we would gain. While many members of the administration agree, others do not, and some seem willing to risk it to accomplish other goals. Some degree of quiet pressure on Iran to stop their more damaging operations in Iraq could be useful, and the Iranians probably would back down under those circumstances. But the president's policy risks engaging Iran's nationalist pride, its strategic interests, and its real fear of the United States."

Though none of the major contenders for the Democratic 2008 presidential nomination have ruled out using military means to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, Democrats on Capitol Hill are demanding that the president seeks authorisation from Congress before acting against Iran.

Jim Webb, the newly elected Democrat from Virginia, asked Condoleezza Rice last month a question that was, for a Senator, unusually pithy and direct: "Is it the position of this administration that it possesses the authority to take unilateral action against Iran, in the absence of a direct threat, without congressional approval?" So far, Webb says, he has not received a satisfactory or clear answer.

"The president has said that he supports a diplomatic solution of the situation in Iran," said the new speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. "I would take him at his word. I do believe that Congress should assert itself, though, and make it very clear there is no previous authority for any president to go into Iran."

Both houses on Capitol Hill have made that very point this weekend with regard to Bush's plan to send 21,000 more troops to Iraq. Many Democrats now think they were too timid in the run-up to the Iraq war. If so, that's not a mistake they are keen to repeat with Iran.

Yet according to Rand Beers, who worked on the National Security Council for four different presidents, including George W Bush, military action is the worst possible course of action. At best, bombing Iran's nuclear facilities at Natanz and Isfahan might only set back the Iranian nuclear programme by a few years.

"There is now a vigorous debate in Tehran over whether Iran's nuclear program is worth the risk of additional international opprobrium," said Beers, adding that Washington's crackdown on Iranian financial interests overseas was beginning to have some effect. On Friday, Japan approved a fresh list of sanctions against Iran to punish Tehran for its continued defiance of the UN, while in Washington the Treasury Department added another three Iranian firms to its lengthening list of "proliferators" that US citizens are barred from doing business with.

"The diplomatic 'carrots and sticks' seem to be working. Unfortunately, the administration's ham-handed military posturing and rhetoric risk torpedoing these efforts and offering [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad a reprieve," said Beers. "We should be fostering this debate with a mix of sanctions and diplomacy, not undermining it."

Washington will press European capitals to impose their own sanctions on Iran if, as expected, Iran fails to meet Wednesday's UN deadline for it to end its uranium enrichment programme.

The Bush administrations' sabre-rattling may please hawks at home, but one by-product of Washington's impatience with Iran is that it boosts the standing of Ahmadinejad. The Iranian president suffered a humiliating reverse in the most recent local elections, but finds his popularity recovering as the US threatens Iran. "The more the rhetoric is ratcheted up, the more Ahmadinejad is given a life vest," said Daniel Levy, director of the Middle East Initiative at the New America Foundation, a centrist Washington think tank.

One other group, then, has good reason to oppose military conflict between Iran and the United States: the Iranian opposition. President Bush allocated $75m last year to be spent on supporting democracy and the internal opposition in Iran, but America's reputation in the Middle East is now so tarnished that the money lies unclaimed as opposition groups fear that being associated with, or funded by, Washington would immediately compromise their message.

"We need to be able to give the democrats room and space to be able to manoeuvre," said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, adding that "nothing has hurt the pro-democracy movement more" than the present impasse. Bombing Iran might make matters even worse, setting back the reformist cause for years amidst a nationalist uproar denouncing the US yet again as "the Great Satan".

Bush once argued that the promotion of democracy across the Middle East was a great and generational cause that would one day be seen as a pivotal moment in the region's history. It would be a grim irony if he embarked upon a policy that ruined the cause of reform in Tehran and handed another unearned victory to the most reactionary elements of the Iranian regime.

Democrats fail to force issue on Iraq troop build-up

IN A move that came as a relief to President Bush, the US Senate last night refused to consider a resolution on denouncing the Iraq troop build-up that the US House of Representatives had passed the day before.

For the second time in two weeks, the Senate voted not to debate a non-binding measure that would repudiate George Bush's recent decision to send 21,500 troops to Iraq to bolster security in Baghdad.

The Democrats had wanted to bring the measure to the floor, but they failed to overcome Republican resistance.

The vote was 56 in favour and 34 against. Under Senate rules, 60 votes were needed to bring the resolution to the floor for debate.

Before the vote, Democrats argued in vain for minority Republicans to break with Bush and support taking up the measure in line with US public opinion.

"If we believe plunging into Baghdad neighbourhoods with more American troops will not increase chances of success, we are duty bound to say so, and a minority of senators should not thwart that expression," said Michigan Democratic Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the armed services committee.

The Democrats' failure in the Senate contrasted with Friday's Congressional vote in which the 435-member House, capping four days of impassioned debate, defied the Republican president, voting 246 to 182 against the troop increase in what amounted to the first such rebuke since the US-led invasion in March 2003.

But in the Senate, procedural rules allow a minority to block debate.

However, the Democrat leadership secured a partial victory by blocking a vote on a rival Republican-backed proposal forbidding a cut-off of funding to US troops.

The Senate's rare Saturday session came on a day US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an unannounced visit to Baghdad.