Iran Propaganda is Not Just About Attacking Iran. It is Also About Staying In Iraq. It is REALLY about attacking Iran, but it is also REALLY about connecting Iraq and Iran as part of the same project. I imagine others have made this point in other posts, however, I have not seen it, so I wanted to make sure it is recognized.
Invading Iraq was about oil, but it wasn't just about oil, it was about a lot of motivations and intentions - xenophobia, revenge, imperialism, continual war, you are by now familiar with them, some primary, some secondary, all not mutually exclusive. The weapons making their way to the insurgents in Iraq are going to come from a variety of sources. There is a world-wide network of arms dealings that form complex connections and nets, not unlike how it is that you can never necessarily have a good sense of from where your tank of gas came. Similar to the complex relationships, rhetorically queried about tonight by Rep. Maxine Waters in the Iraq War Resolution debate, when she asked "Who are we fighting? Some Sunnis, some Shiites, some Kurds, some Syrians, some Iranians. I don't think the soldiers know. I don't think the administration knows," the complex relationships found within the insurgency and civil war within Iraq.
Republican congressmen and women today have expanded this Iran fear-mongering propaganda into the Iraq War Resolution by connecting Iraq's future with the greater "war on terror" and feared "Islamic Jihadist" expansionism, several of them specifically mentioning Iran.
So similarly to the neo-cons' Iraq intentions and strategy, the timing of the increase in the administration's attempts to connect Iran to the violence in Iraq, to increase the demonizing of Iran and scare the American people, is also about justifying "the surge" and creating a sense that a permanent American military presence in Iraq is critical and necessary. The charges don't need to be confirmed, really, they just need to be put out there to help frame the debate.
No doubt, an air strike or greater strike on Iran is desired by the administration as a continuation of the extremist Neo-con ideological game plan, but what's really going on here is that there are always more than one "what's really going on here"s going on.