{"id":16507,"date":"2012-09-26T15:23:54","date_gmt":"2012-09-26T23:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=16507"},"modified":"2012-09-26T15:38:14","modified_gmt":"2012-09-26T23:38:14","slug":"how-to-go-to-war-with-iran-provoke-an-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/26\/how-to-go-to-war-with-iran-provoke-an-attack\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Go to War With Iran: Provoke an Attack"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday, Patrick Clawson, the director of research at the pro-Israel think-tank the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, suggested<\/a> that the US should work covertly and through international means of force to provoke Iran to take the first shot against the US or Israel. Otherwise, he says, starting a war with Iran will be really hard to accomplish.<\/p>\n

“Crisis initiation,” he calls it. It’s very hard to do. And therefore “it\u2019s very hard for me to see how the United States President can get us to war with Iran.”<\/p>\n

Clawson recites a number of past incidents in history that presidential administrations have been able to use to justify going to war: the attack on Pearl Harbor, the sinking of the Lusitania, the Gulf of Tonkin, the explosion of the USS Maine, the attack on Fort Sumter…<\/p>\n

Finally, he advises: “If the Iranians aren’t going to compromise, it would be best if somebody else started the war.”<\/p>\n