Like I said regarding the Basque Peace Process, "it is all carefully choreographed", by which I meant [and mean] not that it has all been agreed beforehand, but that none of what happens, nor the sequence in which it happens, is really surprising. Everyone is acting in character.

There is no way Turkey is going to allow the US to use it as a staging ground. Back in 2003 the Turkish military was all rah-rah for war but the parliament opposed it. Today, with Turkey and Iran needing each other to stem the influence of the self-ruling Iraqi Kurdistan, even the military establishment will oppose helping the US, and the government has even refused to be bribed with a nuclear reactor.

Apparently Bulgaria has also been approached by the Bush administration. I don't know what they'll do: they have completely withdrawn from the "coalition of the willing", which I suppose makes them unlikely to cooperate with an Iranian adventure.

That leaves the UK, and there it all boils down to Blair. Taking part in an operation against Iran would be political suicide, but he's a political walking corpse anyway. It's all up to Brown or the rebellious backbenchers to unseat Blair sooner rather than later. Don't hold your breath.

What does not bode well is France and Germany's willingness to invoke Chapter 7. The presidential and parliamentary elections in France are scheduled for next year, which is too late to make a difference. The Clearstream case looks set to destroy Villepin and replace him with Sarkozy, who [from my Spanish point of view] is an Aznarite which gives me the creeps. Things could get really interesting if Clearstream took down Chirac as well.

As for We the People of Europe, like I said there are no elections in the EU3 before the November elections in the US unless either Blair or Chirac screw up which, you have to give them that, they are unlikely to do because they are very good at what they do. So, nothing should come out of that. Unless someone comes out with uncontrovertible evidence to bring down a government or two over the CIA flights, for instance, nothing will happen. Maybe the new Prodi government can make some noise about the CIA balck-ops in Italy over the last few years.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman