I think neither.

Not that there isn’t a danger, but there are not enough bad things lining up to make either likely.

Mostly because the ayatollah is too smart to take Bolton’s bait. The Israeli propaganda about the threat of an Iranian attack is obvious bullshit. There’s nothing else to fight about. Even if the navy and IRGC get into some stupid tangle in the gulf, doesn’t necessarily mean it would spread. The chiefs must be telling Trump that an air campaign would be counter-productive and would not achieve regime change, only more regional chaos. And a land invasion would break the army. Plus I don’t think Trump wants war with Iran at all. He just wants a “better” deal than the JCPOA.

“We don’t take orders from Bolton,” said the army general in response to the national security adviser’s Iran policy in Syria. Let’s hope we hear some more dissent like that in the coming days to help cool things down.

The bad news is Pompeo stood up Merkel this morning in what was supposedly some emergency. I guess we’ll see.

Also, Guaido has no support outside of Washington DC. At least the Shah had been the dictator before. At least Yushchenko lost an election he could pretend that he won. What claim to support does Guaido have? That he’s on the record supporting an American invasion of his country? After 2 1/2 failed coups there in the last 5 months, it is almost impossible to believe that the White House would be willing to try to murder Maduro or launch any kind of military raid there to install this loser in his place. The mob would tear him limb from limb, as they threatened to do to the coup plotters back during failed regime change putsch ’02.

Of course Trump is still a giant, ignorant, incompetent boob. So anything’s possible. But I’m not too worried for now.