IRAN -The 8 May letter from US Representative John Conyers Jr, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, to George Bush received virtually no media coverage, in spite of the fact that it warned the president that an attack on Iran without Congressional approval would be grounds for impeachment. Rumour has it several US senators have been briefed about the possibility of war with Iran.

Something is afoot. Just what is not clear, but over the past several months, several moves by the White House strongly suggest that the Bush administration will attack Iran sometime in the near future. According to the Asia Times, "a former Assistant Secretary of State still active in the foreign affairs community" has said an air attack will target the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force garrisons.

With US forces bogged down in next-door Iraq, not even the current White House is willing to put troops on the ground amid 65 million Iranians.

But there is a certain disconnect to all this, particularly given December's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concluding that Iran had abandoned its programme to build a nuclear weapon. The NIE is the consensus view of all 16 US intelligence services.

The National Intelligence Estimate was more nuanced than some of the headlines suggested. It had only "moderate confidence" that Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program by the Summer of 2007, and said "we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons". At the time, the report seemed to shelve any possibility of war with Iran. However, shortly after the intelligence estimate on Iran was released, the old 'into Iraq team' went to work undermining it.

Iran in Iraq?

According to Newsweek, during his Middle East tour in January, Bush "all but disowned the document" to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. A "senior administration official" told the magazine, "He [Bush] told the Israelis that he can't control what the intelligence community says but that [the NIE's] conclusions don't reflect his own views."

Neither do they reflect the views of Vice President Dick Cheney or Defence Secretary Robert Gates.

In an interview with ABC during his recent ten-day visit to the region, Cheney downplayed the NIE report, saying: "We don't know whether or not [the Iranians have] restarted." Cheney also said Iran was seeking to build missiles capable of reaching the United States sometime in the next decade.

On 21 April, Gates went a step further to say that Iran was "hell-bent" on acquiring nuclear weapons, and that, while he was not advocating war with Iran, the military option should be kept on the table.

A month before Gates' comment, the White House quietly extended an executive order stating that Iran represented an "ongoing threat" to US national security. The Bush administration claims that the 2002 resolution that led to the war in Iraq gives it the right to strike at "terrorists" wherever they are. Last September, the Kyl-Lieberman Sense of the Senate resolution designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a "terrorist organisation."

The administration has sharply increased its rhetorical attacks on Iran in a way that is disquietingly similar to the campaign that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. For example, there is the current charge that the Quds Force is arming anti-American groups in Iraq and providing them with high-tech roadside bombs and sophisticated rockets.

General David Petraeus, the new head of US Central Command, told the Senate Committee on Armed Services that "special groups" are "funded, trained, armed and directed by Iran's Quds Force....It was these groups that launched Iranian rockets and mortar rounds at Iraq's seat of government" in the Green Zone. Patraeus replaced Admiral William "Fox" Fallon, who had openly opposed a military confrontation with Iran.

But the United States has never presented any evidence to back up those charges. US officials say the rockets pounding the Green Zone have Iranian markings on them, but they have yet to show any evidence to that effect. And, as for the special roadside bombs, or the explosively formed penetrators (EFP), the evidence is entirely deductive.

The United States argues that the copper cores used in these bombs requires using a heavy machine press and that Iraq has no such presses. But before the invasion, Iraq was the most industrialised Arab country, with a sophisticated machine tool industry, and a study by Time magazine says the cities of Basra, Karbala and Najaf "may indeed have such presses."

An Israeli minister has said an attack on Iran's nuclear sites will be "unavoidable" if Tehran refuses to halt its alleged weapons programme.

In the most explicit threat yet by a member of Ehud Olmert's government, Shaul Mofaz, a Deputy Prime Minister, said the hardline Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "would disappear before Israel does".

"If Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective," Mofaz, who is also Israel's Transport Minister, said in comments published this wek by the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

"Attacking Iran in order to stop its nuclear plans will be unavoidable."

Iranian-born Mofaz is a former army chief and Defence Minister. He is a member of Olmert's security cabinet and leads regular strategic coordination talks with the US State Department.

Iran denies trying to build nuclear weapons and has defied Western pressure to abandon uranium enrichment. The leadership in Tehran has threatened that if attacked the country will retaliate against Israel - believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal - and American targets in the region.

Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for Israel to be wiped off the map since becoming president. On Monday, he said Israel was "about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene".

End of term

Ehud Olmert, Israel's Prime Minister, has been in Washington this week. The day before Senator Obama addressed America's pro-Israeli lobby Aipac, Olmert used some of his toughest public language yet about Iran to the same audience.

"The international community has a duty and responsibility to clarify to Iran, through drastic measures, that the repercussions of their continued pursuit of nuclear weapons will be devastating," he said.

The speculation is that President George Bush and Prime Minister Olmert want to remove what they believe is a clear and present danger before they face their own political oblivion. Bush is finishing his time at the White House still dogged by the disaster of Iraq, and Olmert faces disgrace over allegations of corruption.

But the talk has alarmed, among others, the former German Foreign Minister, Joshka Fischer.

Germany has, with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, taken the lead in talks with Iran about its nuclear plans. He wrote in the Israeli daily Haaretz this week that Messrs Bush and Olmert seem to have been planning to end the Iranian nuclear programme "by military, rather than by diplomatic means".

Fischer fears that the Middle East is drifting towards a new great confrontation in 2008.

"Iran must understand that without a diplomatic solution in the coming months, a dangerous military conflict is very likely to erupt. It is high time for serious negotiations to begin," he said.

Scenario points to November

One scenario being discussed by Israeli analysts is that there could be an attack, by Israel or by the Americans, after the US election in November and before the new president is inaugurated in January, with the tacit consent of the incoming president. That might be easier if it is Senator Obama's Republican rival John McCain.

During the campaign for his party's nomination, he once sang "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beachboys' classic 'Barbara Ann'. In a less jocular moment, he said that the only thing worse than attacking Iran would be to allow it to have nuclear weapons.

Some pro-Israeli US analysts are arguing that Iran's response to an attack would not be as harsh as many have predicted.

This week Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei repeated that Iran did not want nuclear weapons. But he said it would continue to develop nuclear energy for daily life.

Those who have made their minds up about Iran are more likely to listen to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has once again predicted Israel's doom. None of this means an attack on Iran is coming. But it is being discussed, and that is significant.