Scott Ritter's claim that the US was going to attack Iran last month was wrong, thanks to the thousands of American parents who would not let their children enlist in the military. We simply do not have the resources to commit to a war with Iran; in fact, the US is already developing plans to reduce their current force in half by next year because they are running out of men.
George Bush ran for office promising to restore the honor and dignity of the Presidency. However, the current events in Iraq have brought the office of the Presidency into shame and disrepute. For the second time in 25 years, we have suffered humiliation at the hands of Iran. Jaafari has visited Iran, layed a wreath at the tomb of the late Ayatollah Khomeni, and signed a flurry of economic agreements with Iran.
Professor Juan Cole has an article about the background of the Iran-Iraq rapproachment here.
In the early 1980's, in the middle of the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam exiled many Shiites from Iraq. They went to Iraq, where Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeni formed them into the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq:
Jaafari's visit was a blow to the Bush administration's strategic vision, but a sweet triumph for political Shiism. In the dark days of 1982, Tehran was swarming with Iraqi Shiite expatriates who had been forced to flee Saddam Hussein's death decree against them. They had been forced abroad, to a country with which Iraq was then at war. Ayatollah Khomeini, the newly installed theocrat of Iran, pressured the expatriates to form an umbrella organization, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which he hoped would eventually take over Iraq. Among its members were Jaafari and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. On Jan. 30, 2005, Khomeini's dream finally came true, courtesy of the Bush administration, when the Supreme Council and the Dawa Party won the Iraqi elections.
Both Jaafari and Al-Hakim, an influential cleric in Iraq, are members of this group. Sistani, although not a member, is an Iranian citizen and also has ties to Iran.
So, what the Iranians could not accomplish through 8 years of fruitless warfare, they were able to accomplish in 2 years through our massive blunder of invading Iraq. Thanks to our bungled war, the Khomeni-backed Islamic Revolutionaries have taken over in Iraq.
Jaafari was smart enough to tell Bush everything he wanted to hear during his visit to the US. But he has discovered the secret to playing Bush -- tell him whatever he wants to hear, and then do what you think is best.
In another humiliation for the US, Iraq has agreed not to let the US use its territory to invade Iran.
The PNAC's dream of invading Iran is now kaput.
This all goes back to Bush's poor judgement in invading Iraq. He ignored the fact that Khomeni was widely revered among the Shiite community in Iraq:
Iraq has a Shiite Muslim majority of some 62 percent. Iran's Shiite majority is thought to be closer to 90 percent. The Shiites of the two countries have had a special relationship for over a millennium. Saddam had sealed the border for more than two decades, but throughout centuries, tens of thousands of Iranians have come on pilgrimage to the holy Shiite shrines of Najaf and Karbala every year. Iraqis likewise go to Iran for pilgrimage, study and trade. Although neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz maintained before the Iraq war that Iraqis are more secular and less interested in an Islamic state than Iranians, in fact the ideas of Khomeini had had a deep impact among Iraqi Shiites. When they could vote in January earlier this year, they put the Khomeini-influenced Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq in control of seven of the nine southern provinces, along with Baghdad itself.
Any reasonable person who knew this could have seen this as a risk of invading Iraq. Paul Wolfowitz cannot determine foreign policy from the cozy confines of a Washington, DC think tank surrounded by Chalabi and his used-car salesmen.