Analyst: U.S. will bomb Iran

WASHINGTON - President Bush says he isn’t looking for a fight, but the question won’t go away: Is the United States headed for war with Iran’s Islamic rulers?

Increasing tensions with Iran over its nuclear program and actions in Iraq have fueled speculation that Bush may be paving the way for military action. With U.S. forces tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, no one expects a ground invasion, but analysts at both ends of the spectrum put little stock in Bush’s insistence that he’s focused only on diplomacy.

“I still believe, at the end of the day, that he will bomb the Iranian [nuclear] facilities,” said Joshua Muravchik, a neoconservative scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Bush and his advisers describe U.S. policy as a carrot-and-stick approach that uses the threat of military action to create diplomatic leverage. The goal is to encourage internal dissent in Iran and force the government to take a more moderate approach.