So how close is a showdown over Iran?

Sunday April 16, 2006
The Observer

It would seem, to Middle Eastern eyes scanning the latest headlines online yesterday, yet further evidence of secret plans for the conflict that everyone is now dreading. Britain, it was suggested, had taken part in an American war game that simulated an invasion of Iran, in an apparent mockery of both countries' insistence that they want a diplomatic - not a military - solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis.

But in the overheated atmosphere of current debate over Iran, nothing is quite what it seems. The simulated battle, fought in 2004 and codenamed Hotspur, was in fact one of a series of 'paper exercises' that have been conducted every few weeks by senior military planners on both sides of the Atlantic since the Sixties to test strategic readiness. Each time, a different country is invaded.

To save inventing new topography every time, maps of real countries around the world are used in strict rotation. In July 2004 - before the current president came to power in Tehran - it happened to be Iran. A few weeks ago, it was Scotland. If Tehran is panicking as a result of the story, so too should Edinburgh.

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