Could US, Iran stumble into war?

Just how close might a military confrontation between Iran and the United States be?

Though a war of words eased a bit recently, President Bush's strong Iran warnings during his just completed Mideast trip, coupled with a ship standoff, are raising fears that a small incident could someday spiral — even by accident — into a real fight.

Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Bush Thursday of sending "a message of confrontation" during his trip to the region. It was a sharp response to Bush's tough rhetoric that Iran remains a serious threat.

Tensions slackened somewhat late last year when a U.S. intelligence report concluded Iran had halted a nuclear weapons program four years ago. But Bush went out of his way while visiting Gulf countries to reiterate that "all options" against Iran remain on the table.

Pointedly, he also warned of "serious consequences" if Iran attacked a U.S. ship in the Gulf, even if it had not been ordered by the Tehran government but was the result of a rash decision by an Iranian boat captain.

At the same time, Bush said he has told leaders of Sunni Arab states — who want the U.S. to keep Shiite Iran's ambitions in check but are nervous about the impact of any military confrontation — that he wants a diplomatic solution.

In part, the president seemed to be trying to assure both Arab allies and Israel that the United States remains intent on pressuring Iran. He also seeks reluctant European support for another round of Iran sanctions.

But the scenario Bush outlined — a rash decision on the water, spilling over into real fighting — is just the thing that many U.S. military officers, and much of the Gulf Arab world, are sweating over.

Adm. William J. Fallon, the top U.S. military commander in the Mideast, told The Associated Press last week that Iran runs the risk of triggering an unintended conflict if its boats continue to harass U.S. warships in the strategic Gulf.

"This kind of behavior, if it happens in the future, is the kind of event that could precipitate a mistake," Fallon said. "If the boats come closer, at what point does the captain think it is a direct threat to the ship and has to do something to stop it?"

Key details of the Jan. 6 incident — when five small Iranian boats swarmed three U.S. warships in the Gulf's narrow Strait of Hormuz — remain unclear, including the source of an accented voice heard warning in English: "I am coming to you ... You will explode after ... minutes."

Iran called the tapes fabricated.

Notably, the U.S. commanders did not fire any warning shots and the Iranians eventually retreated. But in a mid-December incident, publicized by the Navy for the first time last week, a U.S. ship did fire a warning shot at a small Iranian boat that came too close, causing the Iranians to pull back.

The worry: That in a heated political climate, such cat-and-mouse maneuvers could spiral into a more-serious exchange of fire, difficult for either side to pull back from.

Of course, Bush could succeed in getting Iran to be less aggressive with his strong words.

But a major Gulf paper, the Khaleej Times, fretted publicly about the potential for an "ugly flare-up," comparing the confrontation to last year's Iranian seizure of British sailors.

Iran eventually freed the British sailors, but then — as now — its motivations were deeply obscure.

Ahmadinejad is struggling to retain domestic political support, in dire need of a boost to keep any real political influence during his last year and a half in office before seeking re-election.

Standoffs with the United States often give him just such a boost, as the country draws together despite the bitter differences dividing its hard-line and pragmatic factions.

"Whenever there is a potential for confidence-building, there are actors, entrenched actors, in the Iranian system (who) have an incentive to keep the crisis going," said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

In both the Jan. 6 confrontation and last year's British sailor seizure, the Iranian boats were manned by the country's hard-line Revolutionary Guards, not its regular navy, "which has been better behaved and much more professional," Fallon said.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his sometime-protege, Ahmadinejad, are believed to be the two high officials in Iran with the most control over the Guards.

There have been some attempts to cool down the rhetoric.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates told an interviewer this week that he did not view Iran as a direct military threat to the United States, although he considered it a "challenge" to keep Iran contained.

But people often listen the most closely to presidents. And as long as Bush and Ahmadinejad are both in office and focused on each other, said Gulf political analyst Mustafa Alani, the threat of "accidental war" will keep many people on edge.

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EDITOR'S NOTE — Sally Buzbee is the AP's Chief of Middle East News, based in Cairo.