RUMOURS of WARS:U.S. actions against Iran raise war risk, many fear

WASHINGTON-As President Bush escalates the US' confrontation with Iran across a broad front, U.S. allies in Europe and the Middle East are growing worried that the steps will achieve little, but will undercut diplomacy and increase the chances of war. In the latest step, Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are considering designating Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps , the elite military force that serves as the guardian of Iran's Islamic state, as a foreign terrorist organization.News of the decision was leaked to newspapers in what a senior State Department official and Washington -based diplomats said was a sign of an intensifying internal struggle within the U.S. government between proponents of military action and opponents, led by Rice.State Department officials and foreign diplomats see Rice's push for the declaration against the Revolutionary Guards as an effort to blunt arguments by Vice President Dick Cheney and his allies for air strikes on Iran . By making the declaration, they feel, Rice can strike out at a key Iranian institution without resorting to military action while still pushing for sanctions in the UN.Partisans of military force argue that Rice's strategy has failed to change Tehran's behavior."It really does seem this is more tied to the internal debate that is going on in the administration on Iran,rather than a serious attempt to influence Iranian behavior," said an Arab diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity."How that debate will play out is what's concerning" Arab and European countries, he said.Designating the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group "is the State Department trying to do something short of war," said former U.S. diplomat Charles Dunbar,a professor of international relations at Boston University."What else can we do?" said Dunbar, who worked for the State Department in Tehran from 1963 to 1967.The Revolutionary Guard would be the first military unit of a sovereign government ever placed on the department's list of terrorist organizations. The move would allow the Treasury Department to go after the group's finances and those of its reputed business network inside and outside Iran.The Bush administration has been engaging Iran in a increasingly strident war of words since the spring, when the Bush administration demanded tougher U.N. sanctions over Iran's nuclear energy program.The White House says that Bush remains committed to diplomatic and financial actions to persuade Iran to stop enriching nuclear fuel, which the U.S. says can be made into a bomb but that Iran insists is intended only for electricity generation.Recently, the administration has stepped up the rhetoric, accusing Iran of providing Shiite Muslim militias in Iraq with particularly deadly roadside bombs that have killed dozens of U.S. service members.
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