“The Madman Theory. In his first few years as president, Richard Nixon tried to force North Vietnam’s leaders to the peace table by persuading them that he was a madman who would do anything to win the war… A Foreign Ministry spokesman in Tehran today returned the volley by dismissing the report as part of a “psychological war” campaign. The danger of this rhetorical escalation (if that’s all it is) is that it can spin out of control. If Washington and Tehran are playing a game of global chicken (as I speculated last week), upping the stakes with nukes is like loading the front bumper with a barrel of dynamite and a crying baby.

The Madman Theory, Variation B. If Iran is immune to such pressures, our European allies might not be. Many of them already regard Bush as a religious zealot and Cheney as a warmonger. If they believe that the White House might really resolve the dispute with Iran by dropping nuclear bombs, they might suddenly start pushing for sanctions—a move they’ve stopped short of, mainly to protect their own trade relations with Tehran—as a comparatively moderate way of pressuring Iran to stop enriching uranium…

Bureaucratic Politics… The Madman Theory presupposes that at least some of Hersh’s sources are using him to disperse disinformation. The Bureaucratic Politics Theory posits that they’re using him to promote one faction within the government. The two theories are not mutually exclusive; a mix of both might be operative.

The Three-Options Theory. Another possibility is that Bush is going to launch some sort of raid on Iran, and if people think he might drop nuclear bombs, they’ll be relieved—they’ll consider it a relatively moderate gesture—if he confines the attack to conventional bombs…

Or … Or maybe there’s no gamesmanship going on here, maybe Hersh is simply reporting on a nuclear war plan that President Bush is really, seriously considering, a “juggernaut” that might not be stopped. If it’s as straightforward as that, we’re in deeper trouble than most of us have imagined.” (Slate)