Petraeus: "...Military strike on Iran benefits Tehran's hard-line government ..."

Backpedaling his comments at the Institute for of war?

""The [anti-missile] deployments come at a critical turning point in President Obama’s dealings with Iran,"

Today he tones it down a bit to Reuters/ here

"A military strike on Iran could have the unintended consequence of stirring nationalist sentiment to the benefit of Tehran's hard-line government, U.S. General David Petraeus told Reuters.....

"It's possible (a strike) could be used to play to nationalist tendencies," Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command region, which includes Iran, said in an interview this week.

"There is certainly a history, in other countries, of fairly autocratic regimes almost creating incidents that inflame nationalist sentiment. So that could be among the many different, second, third, or even fourth order effects (of a strike)."

Tensions over Iran's nuclear program have set off speculation that Israel could make good on veiled threats to hit its arch-foe pre-emptively. But Israel's envoy to Washington said in December the U.S.-Israeli dialogue on Iran has not reached the point of discussing the military option.

U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have warned that any strike on Iran would not stop the Islamic Republic from pursuing nuclear weapons. Instead, it would only delay Tehran, an opinion Petraeus said he shared.

Dennis Blair, the U.S. director of national intelligence, told Congress on Tuesday that Iran was keeping open the option of developing nuclear weapons but that it remained unclear whether Tehran had the political will to do so.

Petraeus, commenting on advances of Iran's nuclear program, said: "On the one hand, there is no question that there has been a continuation of various aspects of the nuclear program but I'm not sure it has always proceeded as rapidly as has been projected at various times."....

Petraeus cautioned that the "big winner" of the election had been Iran's security apparatus, expanding the influence the Revolutionary Guards Corps, including its elite Qods force.

"It's gone from I think a theocracy that had democratic elements in a narrow spectrum ... to a government that is the result of a hijacked election and a regime that is kept in power by security services to a vastly greater extent than has ever been the case before," he said...."