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America’s 130,000 soldiers in Iraq would also become highly vulnerable in the event of an attack on Iran. “Our troops in Iraq are supplied with food, fuel, and ammunition by truck convoys from a supply base in Kuwait,” says Lang. “Most of that goes over roads that pass through the Shiite-dominated South of Iraq. The Iranians could cut those supply lines just like that—the trucks are easy to shoot at with R.P.G.’s,” or rocket-propelled grenades.

In hopes of avoiding that, the Iraq Study Group advised Bush to open direct talks with Iran. Members of both parties in Congress have publicly given similar advice, as have former secretary of state Colin Powell and Robert Gates, the new secretary of defense. Still, it would be naïve to think that either a wall of opposition or the possibility of dire consequences would necessarily deter this president. Even before his January 10 speech, many inside the military had concluded that the decision to bomb Iran has already been made. “Bush’s ‘redline’ for going to war is Iran having the knowledge to produce nuclear weapons—which is probably what they already have now,” says Sam Gardiner, a retired air-force colonel who specializes in staging war games on the Middle East. “The president first said [that was his redline] in December 2005, and he has repeated it four times since then.”

In April, Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker that U.S. troops were already on the ground in Iran, negotiating alliances with the Azerbaijanis in the North, the Kurds in the Northeast, and the Baluchis in the Southeast. In September, Time reported that a U.S. campaign to wipe out Iran’s nuclear program could entail bombing up to 1,500 targets. More recently, Paul Craig Roberts, a former assistant secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan, asserted in the Baltimore Chronicle that Bush “will attack Iran with tactical nuclear weapons, because it is the only way the neocons believe they can rescue their goal of U.S. (and Israeli) hegemony in the Middle East.” Adds former C.I.A. officer Philip Giraldi, “I’ve heard from sources at the Pentagon that their impression is that the White House has made a decision that war is going to happen.”

According to Sam Gardiner, the most telling sign that a decision to bomb has already been made was the October deployment order of minesweepers to the Persian Gulf, presumably to counter any attempt by Iran to blockade the Strait of Hormuz. “These have to be towed to the Gulf,” Gardiner explains. “They are really small ships, the size of cabin cruisers, made of fiberglass and wood. And towing them to the Gulf can take three to four weeks.”

Another serious development is the growing role of the U.S. Strategic Command (StratCom), which oversees nuclear weapons, missile defense, and protection against weapons of mass destruction. Bush has directed StratCom to draw up plans for a massive strike against Iran, at a time when CentCom has had its hands full overseeing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Shifting to StratCom indicates that they are talking about a really punishing air-force and naval air attack [on Iran],” says Lang.

Lang also notes that the recent appointment of a naval officer, Admiral William Fallon, to the top post at CentCom may be another indication that Bush intends to bomb Iran. “It makes very little sense that a person with this background should be appointed to be theater commander in a theater in which two essentially ‘ground’ wars are being fought, unless it is intended to conduct yet another war which will be different in character,” he wrote in his blog. “The employment of Admiral Fallon suggests that they are thinking about something that is not a ground campaign.”

Lang predicts that tensions will escalate once the administration grasps the truth about Prime Minister Maliki. “They want him to be George Washington, to bind together the new country of Iraq,” says Lang. “And he’s not that. He is a Shia, a factional political leader, whose goal is to solidify the position of Shia Arabs in Iraq. That’s his goal. So he won’t let them do anything effective against [Muqtada al-Sadr’s] Mahdi army.” Recently, a complicated cat-and-mouse game has begun, with Maliki’s forces arresting hundreds of Mahdi militiamen, including a key aide to Muqtada al-Sadr. But there are many unanswered questions about the operations, which could amount to little more than a short-term effort to appease the U.S.

Gary Sick is slightly more optimistic that the Bush administration’s Iran strategy entails more than brute force. “What has happened is that the United States, in installing a Shiite government in Iraq, has really upset the balance of power [in the Middle East],” Sick says. “Along with our Sunni allies—Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt—[the administration is] terribly concerned about Iran emerging as the new colossus. Having created this problem, the U.S. is now in effect using it as a means of uniting forces who are sympathetic [to us].”

In order to do that, Sick says, the administration must reassure America’s allies that it is serious about protecting them if the conflict spreads throughout the region—drawing in Shiite Iran, Sunni Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, which would resist any attempt by the Kurds to create an independent state. “That means providing Patriot missiles, if Iran goes after the Saudi oil ports,” he says. “One of the prices we will have to pay is a more active role in the Arab-Israeli dispute. Then there is fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon. The president has signed a covert-action finding that allows the C.I.A. to confront and counter Hezbollah in Lebanon. So this is a very broad strategy. It has a clear enemy and an appeal to Saudis, to Israelis, and has a potential of putting together a fairly significant coalition.”

For all that, Sick acknowledges, this policy carries a significant risk of provoking war with Iran: “Basically, this is a signal to Maliki that we are not going to tolerate Shiite cooperation with Iran. This could lead to the ultimate break with Maliki. But once you start sending these signals, you end up in a corner and you can’t get out of it.”

Whatever the administration’s master plan may be, parts of it are already under way. In mid-January, the U.S. sent a second aircraft-carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf. According to Gardiner, by the end of February the United States will have enough forces in place to mount an assault on Iran. That, in the words of former national-security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, would be “an act of political folly” so severe that “the era of American preponderance could come to a premature end.”