Storm clouds darkening over the Middle East suggest a growing peril for the United States and the possibility of a new war that could embroil the U.S., Israel, Iran and others in a bloody, costly fight.
Behind this week's exchange of threats between Iran and the United States over access to the Persian Gulf, seasoned analysts see a perfect storm of factors that could trigger armed conflict.
Iran's work on nuclear weapons is fast approaching a "red line," the crossing of which both the United States and Israel say is unacceptable and may have to be halted by force. Washington and European capitals are preparing new sanctions that would sever Iran from the international banking system, a move that would cripple its economy and that Tehran has said it would consider a provocation to war. Growing violence in Syria threatens to spill over its borders with Israel, Lebanon and Turkey, a NATO ally.
Amid the saber-rattling rhetoric from Washington and Tehran, and Arab world upheaval from Egypt to Iraq to Yemen, the United States is planning an unprecedented escalation of military cooperation with Israel, including massive joint exercises this spring to practice joint command and maneuver of ground forces in combat.
And political campaigns, including a struggle between bitterly opposed factions in Iran's March parliamentary elections and the U.S. presidential contest culminating in the fall, are likely to keep all these tensions at a boil.
