If recently amended US and Israeli intelligence reports are correct, the next US president will have precious little time to engage Iranian leaders in any further negotiations over its nuclear weapons program. He will be focusing instead on the details, operational plans and ramifications of a US direct military strike on Iran's nuclear

The next US president will have precious little time to engage Iranian leaders.

installations. It would appear that years of diplomatic efforts, international sanctions, attempts at accommodation, and "shell-game" nuclear inspections by the IAEA, the UN's nuclear watchdog, have gone nowhere, and both countries are now convinced that Iran will have acquired sufficient weapons-grade uranium to build a nuclear bomb by the early spring of 2009.

Mark Hosenball wrote recently in Newsweek: "For reasons that remain unclear to the Bush administration and its allies, the level of violence attributable to Iranian-backed insurgents in both Iraq and Afghanistan is falling." Actually, the administration is well aware of the reasons for this. In May 2008, US negotiators entered into a pact with Iran, the essence of which was that in return for reducing Iranian-assisted terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan and stabilizing oil prices, the US administration would refrain from military action against Iran's nuclear installations for the remainder of the Bush presidency.

In return, the Iranians undertook to limit their support for Afghan insurgents, opened the way for the US military and the Iraqi government to destroy al-Qaeda and the foreign Sunni insurgents in Iraq, and allowed President Bush to claim with some justification that his surge had been successful prior to his leaving the White House. Tehran ordered Iranian intelligence officers and the Revolutionary Guard Quds Force working undercover in Iraq to halt attacks on US troops by pro-Iranian militias, including Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army, although jihadist training camps in Iran have continued to flourish.

President Bush is also seeking another foreign policy coup prior to leaving office. According to the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida, this involves undermining the Iranian-Syrian relationship by establishing a US-Syrian rapprochement whereby Israel would agree to cede the Golan Heights to Syria (presumably under intense US pressure) in exchange for Syria breaking its ties with Iran - a pipe-dream for which Israel eventually will pay dearly.

The US undertaking involves easing economic and political pressure on Syria and withdrawing support for Syrian opposition groups. As a result, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would no longer fear any serious international investigation into the political assassinations of anti-Syrian Lebanese leaders and would be granted international respectability, and permitted to exercise greater influence over Lebanese political affairs - something it had to abandon in the aftermath of Lebanon's Cedar Revolution of 2005.

Despite these secret deals, however, tensions continue to rise over Iran's quest for nuclear weapons. From the Iranian perspective, nothing has changed. Each day draws them closer to their goal. The regime remains ideologically and theologically committed to destroying the American presence in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East. The pact, however, has allowed the mullahs time to expand and harden their nuclear sites, enhance their command and control centers, diversify their defensive and offensive missile capabilities with Russian, Chinese, North Korean and Syrian assistance, increase the number of operating centrifuges, and proceed at full speed toward the development of an Iranian nuclear bomb, as well as a nuclear shield under which it intends to export its global jihad.

The bargain has also provided the US, Israel and its European allies the time they need to prepare their offensive and defensive land, sea and air war capabilities for the inevitable confrontation. Today, the Persian Gulf and

Advanced US and Israeli satellites are fixed on Iranian missile launching sites.

Mediterranean are awash with high-tech American warships of every class. Advanced US and Israeli satellites are fixed on Iranian missile launching sites. Anti-missile defense systems encircle Iran and state-of-the-art Israeli Hermes and Heron unmanned aerial vehicles are scattered throughout the Caucasus. Israel now possesses 90 F-16I long-range fighters that can carry enough fuel to reach Iran if necessary, and recently purchased two new Dolphin-class submarines from Germany - reportedly capable of firing nuclear-armed warheads - in addition to the three it already possesses.

This past summer, Israel carried out air maneuvers in the Mediterranean that touched off an international controversy over whether they were a "dress rehearsal" for an imminent attack, a stern warning to Iran, or just a way to get the US and Europe to increase pressure on Tehran to stop its nuclear weapons program. And in September, the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported that the Dutch intelligence service (AVID) had, "called off an operation aimed at infiltrating and sabotaging Iran's weapons industry due to an assessment that a US attack on the Islamic Republic's nuclear program is imminent."

Although the US has installed its advanced early-warning FBX-T anti-missile radar system in Israel to guard against Iranian missile attacks, the system is also designed to keep an eye on anything moving in Israeli skies (that is, to prevent an Israeli air strike on Iran's nuclear sites), thereby insuring that the grand bargain will be maintained until either President Bush leaves office or Iran is on the verge of building a nuclear bomb, or unless Iran preemptively attacks Israel,* whichever comes first.



Both the Israelis and the Americans are convinced that Iran is rapidly approaching the nuclear threshold, and both countries (not to mention the entire Sunni Arab world) recognize that allowing the mullahs to achieve nuclear capability would be madness. Like Lenin and Hitler, Admadinejad has a grand vision for the Middle East. A nuclear-armed Iran ruled by the apocalyptic Islamic regime in Tehran would threaten the Persian Gulf region and its vast energy resources, spark nuclear proliferation amongst the unstable Sunni regimes of the Middle East, inject additional volatility into global energy markets, embolden terrorists from Buenos Aires to Baghdad, destabilize Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf emirates through Iranian terror proxies, and seek to destroy Israel.

As Michael Oren and Seth Robinson pointed out recently in the Wall Street Journal: "Through its Hizbullah and Hamas proxies, Iran has gained dominance over Lebanon and Gaza, and through its Baathist and Mahdist allies, has extended its influence through Syria and Iraq. An Iranian threat looms over the Persian Gulf financial centers and beyond, to the European cities within Iranian missile range."

Failing to de-claw Iran would mark the beginning of a new strategic order in the Middle East. It would solidify Iranian ascendancy in the region and legitimize Hamas and Hizbullah while weakening Israel - not to mention

Failing to de-claw Iran would mark the beginning of a new strategic order in the Middle East.

irreversibly damaging America's regional, if not global, influence. There is no longer any realistic alternative to the inevitable confrontation and Washington, Israel and our European allies, despite their rhetoric to the contrary, seem resigned to this.

Winston Churchill's remark that "Americans will always do the right thing - after they've exhausted all the alternatives" is about to come to pass. Senator Biden's October 19th prescient remark in Seattle - that within the next six months, the next president will face a challenge from some hostile power or terrorist group eager to test the resolve of the rookie chief executive - is about to be tested.

Note

* Russian intelligence has informed Israel that Iran is planning a radiological "dirty bomb" attack off its coast. An Iranian cargo freighter MV Iran Deyanat was seized by pirates off the coast of Somalia on August 22nd and turned out to be "an enormous floating dirty bomb, intended to be detonated after exiting the Suez Canal at the eastern end of the Mediterranean and in proximity to the coastal cities of Israel." Such an event would trigger an instantaneous nuclear response from Israel.