Is the countdown to the attack against Iran resuming?

According to the following sources, CENTCOM is stepping up its posture for a possible attack against Iran: Bush authorizes new covert action against Iran while nine US warships enter the Persian Gulf in show of force constituting largest naval force in the Middle-East since 2003.

An attack againt a country like Iran would have to go through several preparatory phases which, among others, would include the preparations outlined by the Truthout and Debka articles above.

The need of a "psychological preparation of the battlefield" will be taken care of by the United Nations report which will complain of the (predictable) "ongoing Iranian defiance", nevermind the fact that Iran is a member in good standing of the IAEA, that IAEA inspectors are on the groud in Iran, that the NPT not only obliges all nuclear countries to assist others in developing nuclear technologies for civil purposes (as the US helped the Shah before the Iranian Revolution), but that it also specifically recognizes that nothing in the NPT should be interpreted as limiting the right of any country to develop its civilian nuclear program. Nevermind that the Iranian enrichment program does not even come close to enriching to weapons grade specifications, and nevermind that Iran has never attacked a neighbor. When the Iranians simply claim their rights under the NPT their are in "defiance" of the UNSC. And since the UNSC members were dumb and immoral enough yield to US pressures to consider the Iranian nuclear program as a problem, now they will logically (if idiotically) have to take action and if they do not, the US will have to "shoulder its responsability as leader of the world". The Kosovo situation repeated all over again, except that unlike the Serbs, the Iranians do have the means to strike back at the Empire.

More to come soon, no doubt.