Here's the preface to an article from the Centre From Research On Globalization with a similar take on the little noticed 2003 NYT "Iraq Ethnic Cleansing" proposal:

"This article by Michel Collon was first published by Global Research in December 2003. It outlines with foresight the strategy of the US, through covert intelligence operations, of breaking up Iraq into a number of separate states. The unleashing of a civil war with a view to deliberately breaking up Iraq was part of the US war agenda from the outset...."

But the military obstacles to a US attack on Iran seem almost insurmountable. Or are they ? It seems that Dick Cheney may have had a "planned failure" scenario for Iraq from the onset, and even Henry Kissinger has lent his substantial gravitas and his imprimature to the division of Iraq along sectarian lines :

[ source : Kissinger op-ed, Korea Times February 9, 2004 ] ...it may be that like Yugoslavia, Iraq, created for geostrategic reasons, cannot be held together by representative institutions, that it will tend toward autocracy or break up into its constituent groups. While this is far from the preferred outcome, if the democracies are unable to produce democratic central institutions and unwilling to support a benevolent autocrat like Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (founder of the Turkish Republic), then a breakup into three states is preferable to refereeing an open-ended civil war. But it would require firm international guidance.

Such a plan - with Dick Cheney as one of the main authors - was reported on, in 2002, by STRATFOR :

An idea to unite Jordan and Iraq in a pro-U.S. Hashemite kingdom after a U.S. war is being floated in diplomatic and opposition circles, reports Stratfor, the global intelligence company. The plan could be Washington's best scenario for ensuring a stable post-war Iraq.

....Such a plan reportedly was discussed at an unusual meeting between Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan and pro-U.S. Iraqi Sunni opposition members in London last July. In September, Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronoth stated that the U.S. goal in Iraq was to create a united Hashemite kingdom embracing Jordan and Iraq's Sunni areas. Israeli terrorism expert Ehud Sprinzak recently echoed this sentiment on Russian television Sept. 24.

In a nutshell, the plan may involve uniting Jordan and Sunni-populated areas of Iraq under the rule of the current Jordanian regime....

Who is floating the Iraq-Jordan idea, and who might benefit from its realization if it ever comes through? Although it might be wishful thinking by some Iraqi opposition members and Israeli media, it also could bring strategic benefits to the United States, Israel and Jordan....

Sprinzak stated that the authors of a "Hashemite plan" are U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz

Oddly - or not - the "Cheney Plan" was exactly congruent with Israeli intelligence objectives :

[ from previously linked WSW article ] An article that appeared in the World Zionist Organization's publication Kivunim in 1982, on the eve of Israel's invasion of Lebanon and in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war, spelled this out. Written by Oded Yinon, an official in the Israeli foreign ministry, the article was entitled, "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s." It stated, in part:

"Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shiite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization."

Here's a discussion of the larger scenario that fufils such Israeli geopolitical objectives and seems now to be in play - from a December 1, 2002 LA Times OP-Ed by By Sandy Tolan and Jason Felch:

If you want to know what the administration has in mind for Iraq, here's a hint: It has less to do with weapons of mass destruction than with implementing an ambitious U.S. vision to redraw the map of the Middle East.

The new map would be drawn with an eye to two main objectives: controlling the flow of oil and ensuring Israel's continued regional military superiority. The plan is, in its way, as ambitious as the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement between the empires of Britain and France, which carved up the region at the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The neo-imperial vision...includes...compliant governments in Syria and Iran -- either by force or internal rebellion.

For the first step -- the end of Saddam Hussein -- Sept. 11 provided the rationale. But the seeds of regime change came far earlier. "Removing Saddam from power," according to a 1996 report from an Israeli think tank to then-incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was "an important Israeli strategic objective." Now this has become official U.S. policy....

....After removing Hussein, U.S. forces are planning for an open-ended occupation of Iraq, according to senior administration officials who spoke to the New York Times....

...Any occupation would certainly include protecting petroleum installations. Control of the country's vast oil reserves, the second largest in the world and worth nearly $3 trillion at current prices, would be a huge strategic prize....

...But taking over Iraq and remaking the global oil market is not necessarily the endgame. The next steps, favored by hard-liners determined to elevate Israeli security above all other U.S. foreign policy goals, would be to destroy any remaining perceived threat to the Jewish state: namely, the regimes in Syria and Iran. "The War Won't End in Baghdad," wrote the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Ledeen in the Wall Street Journal. In 1985, as a consultant to the National Security Council and Oliver North, Ledeen helped broker the illegal arms-for-hostages deal with Iran by setting up meetings between weapons dealers and Israel. In the current war, he argues, "we must also topple terror states in Tehran and Damascus."

....Perle and Ledeen...are too smart to ignore the rage across the Arab and Muslim worlds that would surely erupt in the wake of war on multiple Middle Eastern fronts.

...anger at a U.S. attack on Iraq could be hard to contain. Indeed, the hard-liners in and around the administration seem to know in their hearts that the battle to carve up the Middle East would not be won without the blood of Americans and their allies. "One can only hope that we turn the region into a caldron, and faster, please," Ledeen preached to the choir at National Review Online last August. "That's our mission..."

[ Al Jazeera, April 17, 2006 ] many analysts are warning against an imminent U.S.-Iran war the coming weeks.

There will be an attack. According to an editorial on The New Statesman, as long as the madman (Bush) is in the White House, now considering bombing another country in the region, a Third World War is imminent.

A recent article by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker suggested the same.

But the U.S. media seems less concerned than the British over the issue.

News headlines on the British media are mostly booked for the Iranian nuclear issue, which didn't even make the front pages of the Washington Post or New York Times.

Will there be a war on Iran or not?

War would be a surprise for the British people, who don't expect their leader, Prime Minister Tony Blair, to dare repeat Iraq mistake, but in the U.S., the situation is a bit different.

________________ In short : Michael Leeden summed it up - by many indications, reigning US NeoConservatives WANT to create a widespread mess [ AKA "war" ] in the Mideast. They're betting the US military will prevail. Now, some predict that the partition of Iraq would lead to regional instability - that's probably part of a range of anticipated scenarios too. Cheney and the NeoCons are expecting Iraq will fall apart : hence, the construction of vast permanent US bases that probably could be likened to self-contained castles. The US military will supervise and guide the fragmentation of Iraq - per the "Cheney Plan" but avoid too much entanglement in the gritty details. And, they're likely expecting blowback from a US strike on Iran : part of the plan. [ see: Perm Iraq Bases Underway, Analysts: Iran Hit=Terror Blowback. Iran's on the horizon.... Wouldn't all of this involve massive bloodshed and loss of life ? Well, yes. But, human lives ( and human rights ) don't figure much in this recrudescence of the "Great Game" : Call it "creative chaos".

Now, back to our fearless leader:

[WaPo, February 26, 2003] "President Bush intends to outline his postwar vision for Iraq and the Middle East in a speech tonight designed in part to showcase the administration's belief that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's overthrow would be a significant step toward broad democratic change in the Arab world....Beyond Iraq, administration officials have been talking for months about the need for long-term change in a region where U.S. presidents for decades have favored the predictability of autocratic regimes."

That's fancy politician talk from George W., but then US Undersecretary of State John Bolton laid it out a bit more bluntly [ Ha'aretz ] in February 2003

U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said in meetings with Israeli officials on Monday that he has no doubt America will attack Iraq, and that it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea afterwards

Per usual, the real devil lies in the details. In the mind of a more or less rational politician or geopolitical analyst, attacking Iran with nuclear weapons would be - on the record - "inadvisable" or - off the record - "insane". Well, the NeoCon faction that has its tentacles firmly wrapped around the very malleable cranium of George W. Bush IS demostrably insane. This is largely the same crew which sought to provoke confrontation with the Soviet Union during the military escalation of the 1980's - the same gang that produced absurdly overstated assessments of Soviet Military capability, the very folks who talked of widespread nuclear war as a conceivable option. In short, they're nuts - super empowered nuts.