Spies in Iranian skies

America does its own thing - again.

Unexplained happenings in the skies over Iran raise questions about the opening of a new front in America's "war on terror". Last month Iranian television aired pictures purporting to show a pilot-less US spy plane crash-landing in Iran's western Kurdestan province. This week brought more unconfirmed reports in Tehran of the discovery of wreckage from another US drone. It may be that only one plane, probably a Predator unmanned aerial vehicle, was involved. It may be that the target of the surveillance flight was not Iran but Iraq, where the US (and Britain) enforce the northern and southern no-fly zones. Either way, the American military appears to be violating Iranian airspace in a manner which can only bolster anti-western hardliners in Tehran and deepen the moderates' fears about Bush administration intentions. None of Iran's neighbours possesses the technological means for invasive snooping of this kind. But the US has both capability and motive.

Speaking in Doha this week, Pentagon boss Donald Rumsfeld said he had information that Iran was "sheltering al-Qaida fighters who fled Afghanistan". As with his claim about an al-Qaida presence in Pakistan Kashmir, Mr Rumsfeld does not deign to share his evidence. But in the current Washington climate, the accusation alone is sufficient to trigger military action under "Bush doctrine" rules. By way of mock reassurance, Mr Rumsfeld suggested he was not plotting "regime change" in Iran since the US was rather counting on an internal revolution to do the job for it.

Like the spy plane incidents, this dismaying display of open hostility follows close on President George Bush's inclusion of Iran in his "axis of evil"; Iran's designation by the state department as the world's number one state sponsor of terrorism; more unsubstantiated claims that Tehran is building nuclear missiles (with Russian help); and Washington's refusal to end its embargo and join the EU in developing trade and diplomatic links. Completely forgotten now, apparently, is Iran's assistance in the early stages of the Afghan campaign. Completely ignored, it seems, is the Iranian majority's wish for gradualist social and civil reform within an Islamic system. Mr Rumsfeld prefers spy planes and confrontation, in Iran as elsewhere. Since that way the "war on terror" will surely be lost, it might be better on balance to lose this clumsy loudmouth instead.