gandalf: By Clark, you’re meaning Wesley Clark, right? I have some issues with he, and the other Clarke (Richard Clarke). Suffice it to say, both have some fairly cumbersome baggage dating back to their days with the Clinton Administration.
I do the see the parallel you mention. My main worry about Israel is that they are the wild card in this equation. I don’t doubt for a second that they are going to act unilaterally to remove Iran’s nuke capability. They have done so in the past with both Iraq and Syria, and I would think that they view Iran as a larger threat than the both of those two combined. I don’t know if Olmert is just making a lot of noise to scare Iran into compliance, but I really get the sense that he is serious. If that proves to be the case, it could ignite a much larger regional conflagration, and one the Russians would hasten to exploit.
