'Pentagon listed 2,000 Iranian targets'

Not exactly breaking news, but I've been on this whole story far to long to skip anything now.

US President George W. Bush and his associates are seriously considering declaring war on Iran and have listed specific facilities that would be targeted in such an event, while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has slowly given up the idea of finding a diplomatic solution to the country's persistence in enriching uranium, a British report said on Sunday morning.

According to senior US defense and intelligence officials that spoke with the Daily Telegraph, the Pentagon has gathered a list of up to 2,000 targets including a major base run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds Force in the south.

Pentagon and CIA officers said that such a war would come to pass as result of a "carefully calibrated program of escalation" that would lead to a "military showdown with Iran," the officials told the newspaper.

This scenario could arise once it was apparent that diplomatic efforts with the country were hopeless. When Iran would be internationally denounced for its interference in Iraq, the US could conduct cross border raids on Iranian training camps and bomb factories.

The report said that the raids would provoke a "major Iranian response" that could result in a halt to Gulf oil supplies; this in turn, said experts, would provide legitimacy to strike Iran's nuclear facilities and armed forces.

Via Jerusalem Post