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Are Washington and Tehran headed for a showdown?

For much of the past decade, conventional wisdom has held that Iran’s dogged pursuit of a nuclear capability – carried out in spite of mounting pressure from the international community – will ultimately become a casus belli for Washington. Early on in his tenure, President George W. Bush even went so far as to declare that the U.S. “will not tolerate” Iran arming itself with nuclear weapons, and to indicate that he was prepared to use force to prevent it. Despite its more dulcet diplomatic tones toward Iran, the administration of Barack Obama has grudgingly repeated much the same thing since taking office: that all options, including the use of force, remain on the table for dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Still, some eight years into the international standoff over Iran’s atomic program, it has become clear that a military option for dealing with an Iranian bomb, if not out of the question entirely, is an exceedingly remote possibility.

That does not mean, however, that Tehran and Washington won’t soon find themselves embroiled in a war. Indeed, Iran’s escalating activity on the territory of its western neighbor, Iraq, could end up becoming the real catalyst for a U.S.-Iranian conflict.