Let's examine the symptoms of his mental decline. First, Bush convinced Americans that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. This is something the poor fool might have believed, given a tenuous grasp of geography, history and political reality. He then began to hallucinate about weapons of mass destruction, despite the evidence of Hans Blix and a multitude of others that there weren't any. And he finally organised a tatty little alliance to join him in the silliest war since Vietnam, one guaranteed to recruit terrorists in unprecedented numbers.

Like Vietnam, the Iraq war was launched with presidential lies. Like Vietnam, the Iraq war descended into a moral and military quagmire. And if Iraq seems to be less of a stuff-up, consider this fact: it's taken just three years in Iraq for US deaths to equal the body count after six years in Vietnam.

Little wonder six retired senior generals have joined ranks with the American public in condemning the war, or that the guru of neo-conservatism, Francis Fukuyama, has broken ranks with the likes of Charles Krauthammer and William Kristol in denouncing it. Or that many in the Republican hierarchy have joined left-wing critics denouncing the invasion as a mistake and a failure, calling for immediate withdrawal.

When Bush was re-elected in 2004, this column suggested the President would go on to blast Iran or have the job done by Israeli surrogates. Both scenarios were dismissed as absurd and alarmist. Now journalist Seymour Hersh's revelations of a US plan to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, perhaps with nuclear bunker-blasters, are causing national and international dismay. They've also provoked anger among the Pentagon's highest-ranking officers already enraged by Donald Rumsfeld's stewardship of the Iraq invasion and occupation. Given Rumsfeld's clear contempt for their opinions, they might well feel mutinous should he and the Commander-in-Chief show further signs of strategic insanity. But would that prevent air strikes by the Israelis? Given the sabre-rattling by that ratbag in Tehran, what could hold Israel back?

Bush is attempting to hose things down, but the world recalls his endlessly repeated mantra before the invasion of Iraq. Military intervention wasn't inevitable, just an option.

Now bleeding in the polls with mid-term elections looming, isn't it possible that Bush might go for broke? Double or nothing? A final, desperate throw of the dice?

Condoleezza Rice might join the Pentagon in trying to talk him down. So, one hopes, would Tony Blair and John Howard. But did Bush listen to reasoned argument last time? With a reckless, irrational President, you've the perfect set-up for the tail to wag the dog. As with 9/11, here's an opportunity for reality to follow a Hollywood script.

Last week I discussed this scenario with Fukuyama. His initial response was that Bush's political situation is too perilous for such a tactic, that the US public and its media wouldn't tolerate another Iraq. But bombing Iran's nuclear facilities could be characterised as surgical. It might not need troops on the ground and would certainly seem more relevant to the war on terror than the neo-con adventure in Iraq. Fukuyama conceded that such a strategy was possible.

And that possibility is more than enough. A lame-duck President with the eagle as his symbol once again takes the role of hawk. With his presidency a total mess, what's there to lose? So it's time to certify the President. Yes, you'd have to certify his equally deranged Vice-President as well. And toss in Rumsfeld to keep them company. Along with anyone else in the administration, the Congress, the Senate or the Australian parliament mad enough to think Iraq a sane decision.

It took place on a day that a Palestinian suicide bomber struck a packed fast-food restaurant in Tel Aviv, killing nine people in the deadliest bombing in Israel in more than a year.

Recent statements by the Palestinian government, Iran and Syria, including one by Hamas on Monday defending the suicide bombing, "are clear declarations of war, and I urge each and every one of you to listen carefully and take them at face value," said Israel's ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman.

"A dark cloud is looming above our region, and it is metastasising as a result of the statements and actions by leaders of Iran, Syria, and the newly elected government of the Palestinian Authority," he said.

The Palestinian UN observer, Riyad Mansour, condemned the suicide bombing and the loss of innocent civilians on both sides, but attacked Israel for trying to portray its latest military escalation - which killed 21 Palestinians between April 7 and 9 - as a response to violence from the Palestinian territories.

"Israel, the occupying power has been relentless in its grave breaches of international law, including the wilful killing and injury of civilians and the practice of extrajudicial executions," he said.

Israeli aircraft retaliated for the attack on Monday night, firing missiles at a metal workshop in Gaza City, and yesterday morning Israeli troops raided a West Bank village near Jenin, arresting the father of the suicide bomber responsible for the attack.

Yet there is also pressure on the acting Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, who has yet to form a government following general elections late last month, to moderate his response lest it undermine US-led efforts to isolate the Hamas government diplomatically and financially unless it renounces violence and recognises Israel.

On Monday the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, called the escalating violence "very worrying" and urged both sides to avoid putting civilians at risk.

He also announced that the Middle East Quartet of peacemakers - the UN, the US, the European Union and Russia - would meet in New York on May 9 to discuss how to advance the stalled roadmap to peace.

Japan has announced that it would not extend new aid to the Palestinians via the Palestinian Authority until it becomes clear that Hamas is committed to the Middle East peace process, Foreign Affairs Ministry officials said yesterday.

Japan - which has given $US840 million ($1.1 billion) in aid to Palestinians since 1993 - will however continue to offer fresh humanitarian aid if the need arises, said a spokesman, Akira Chiba.

"Until we have a clearer picture ... there won't be a situation where new aid would be given."

"They have responded more than I think people see," Straw told British Broadcasting Corp. radio from Saudi Arabia. "For example, they were threatening total withdrawal form the operation of the inspectors. That hasn't actually happened. I think Iran is feeling some of the pressure, as well as its president making belligerent statements," Straw said.

However, he said he believed that Iran would not meet the deadline set by the Security Council, and that the issue would return to the UN body.

"What we will wait for here is the report from Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to see whether he says about Iran's compliance or noncompliance with the obligations imposed on it by the IAEA, and then consider the next steps that we will take," Straw said.

Nonetheless, he said, there was skepticism in Congress about the likelihood of the UN Security Council taking "economic or diplomatic action." As a next step, that left the option of an "economic coalition of the willing," outside the UN framework, to try and deter the Iranians. And failing that, the only two remaining courses of action were intensified efforts "to encourage the reformist and opposition elements in Iran" to the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and a resort to military force, he said.

Military action was "probably the last choice, but it has to be there," stressed Lieberman, who has been visiting Israel over the Pessah festival. He said there was now "active discussion" of the options for such action.

Lieberman indicated that the US had learned a lesson, from both Osama bin Laden and from Adolf Hitler, to the effect that "sometimes when people say really extreme things, which at some level a lot of people don't want to even believe... they may actually mean it. They may intend to do it. So I do think that the statements of Ahmadinejad are taken very seriously, both with regard to [speaking of a world without] the US and with regard to Israel."

Asked what last-resort military option was available, Lieberman said: "I don't think anyone is thinking of this as a massive ground invasion, as in Iraq, to topple the government." Rather, he said, he envisaged "an attempt to hit some of the components of the nuclear program," primarily from the air, with some potential for covert ground assistance.

"I think the only justifiable use of military power would be an attempt to deter the development of their nuclear program if we felt there was no other way to do it," he said. "And I use the word 'deter' because I'm skeptical of our ability - because they've spread their nuclear program and some of it is underground - to knock it out completely."

The goal of such action, he continued, would be "to delay it, to deter it, hoping that you set the program off course, so that by the time they catch up back to where they were, there's been a change in the government. That's the limited objective that I would see."

The senator said the Armed Services Committee had not been briefed on plans for a strike, "but we keep hearing that the administration is considering these options."

Lieberman, who also sits on the Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, added, "The very fact that there is active discussion of the potential - this is not, you know, sort of set war plans, but the discussion of options - does say something. We've come some distance here with regard to Iran, fairly quickly, and I'm not saying that it says without doubt that there'll be military action, but there's been movement... We're taking this very seriously."

Lieberman also told the Post he did not intend to be part of another presidential campaign, but the fact that "Al Gore and I did get a half million more votes than the other ticket" demonstrated that "America is ready for somebody Jewish in national office, president or vice president."

What we are seeing is a rerun of the administration's massive propaganda offensive that led to the invasion of Iraq. There is also no doubt that the Bush Administration has been planning a major air war against Iraq.

The highly respected American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh even claims the Bush Administration is considering the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran's underground nuclear facilities.

This writer reported last December that the US was preparing a massive air campaign against Iran and already probing Iranian air defenses and mounting special forces ground missions to both target high-value nuclear and strategic targets, and to stir up domestic unrest among Iran's ethnic minorities.

On the list for possible US - and likely Israeli - air and missile strikes: more than twenty Iranian nuclear facilities, including the Bushehr reactor; airfields, missile and naval bases; communications nodes; military and intelligence headquarters; military factories; power plants and oil terminals.

No major ground offensive by the US is planned, though its special forces will play an important role in any attack. The surest sign of an impending US attack will be the massing of US strike aircraft in the Gulf and possibly Pakistan and Central Asia, the arrival of additional US aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea, concentration of US Navy minesweepers and shallow-water vessels around the Strait of Hormuz, and heightened activity at US bases in Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, and, of course, Iraq.

Respected international experts say that it if Iran wanted to produce nuclear warheads, it would take 5-10 years. UN nuclear inspectors report no signs Iran is working on nuclear weapons.

But the Bush Administration has used Iran's gleefully announcement that it enriched uranium to 3.5% (83% is need for nuclear weapons), to generate a major US-Iranian crisis seven months before national mid-term elections. The administration clearly hopes its lurid claims that Iran is a nuclear threat to the world will whip gullible Americans back into war fever. A bombing campaign before elections would likely reverse the Republican's steep decline in the polls.

Much of the administration's anti-Iranian jihad has been orchestrated, like the attack on Iraq, by Vice President Dick Cheney, who increasingly emerges as the Rasputin of the Bush presidency. Cheney is very close to Israel's political far right. He is carrying out former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's command to the US that once it invaded Iraq, 'march immediately on Tehran.'

Cheney, and the pro-Israel neoconservatives around him, have long worked closely with Israel's rightists, Mossad intelligence service, and Israel's strategic planners. All agree that Iran, not Iraq, was the greater enemy of Israel, and one that had at all costs to be crushed before it could develop nuclear warheads and the means to deliver them.

Much of the current anti-Iranian hysteria campaign that is currently being trumpeted by the compliant US media and members of Congress is being orchestrated from Cheney's office. It is clear that in spite of the debacle in Iraq, the vice president intends to pursue his personal jihad against all Muslim regimes that are uncooperative and hostile to Israel.

Cheney has persistently frustrated efforts by the US State Department and CIA to improve relations with Tehran. America's mighty Israel lobby has become Cheney's personal army in this struggle, and is mounting a high-powered campaign to generate war fever against Iran. Jewish Americans have been panicked by false claims that Israel is in the direst nuclear peril.

For its part, Iran has played right into the hands of the war party in Washington. President Ahmadinejad's calls for Israel to be wiped out, his denial of the Jewish Holocaust, and the lavish song and dance spectacular he produced over nuclear enrichment delighted many ordinary Iranians. But abroad, Ahmadinejad's fiery pronouncements created an international firestorm of condemnation and made Iran look precisely what Israel's supporters claim: a rogue nation with a dangerous, erratic leadership that absolutely cannot be trusted with nuclear arms. In short, a Mideast North Korea.

Iranians may be forgiven for over-reacting to nuclear Viagra - Indians and Pakistanis responded the same way.
But Iran should have adopted a lower key approach to enrichment and invited UN and European observers to attend.

By flaunting its infant nuclear technology, Tehran provides the US and Israel with an excellent pretext to attack Iran. In such an event, Iran will have precious few sympathizers around the globe. Many will say, 'Iran got what it deserved.' One really wonders if Iran's leaders - many battle-scarred veterans of the frightfully bloody Iran-Iraq war - are daring the US to attack.

The Iranian leadership and the Bush Administration are feeding off one another, gaining domestic popularity with each now escalation but drawing their nations into a clash whose outcome could be dangerously unpredictable and would surely shake the entire Mideast and world oil markets.

Past administrations have put an emphasis on appealing for restraint on all sides.

The bombing Monday in a restaurant killed nine people and the bomber. It was the deadliest attack on Israel in 20 months. Islamic Jihad, classified by the department as a terror organization, claimed responsibility.

The attack was called legitimate by the Hamas-led Palestinian government, which the United States, the
European Union and Canada are boycotting.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned condolences to Foriegn Minister Tzipi Livni and her wishes for a speedy recovery to the injured, McCormack said.

Asked whether the administration had urged Israel to be restrained in any retaliatory strike, the spokesman replied: "Our position is that the Israeli government has the right to defend the Israeli people."

McCormack added: "We, as always, ask them to consider the effect of their actions upon the future prospects for peace. That position is long-standing and unchanged."

Israel should disburse, without further delay, to the Palestinian authority the full amount of the monthly tax and custom revenue which rightfully belong to the Palestinians.

Besides, the international community should continue to provide financial and economic grants and assistance to the Palestinian authority, so as to avoid any dangerous repercussions on the day-to-day life of the Palestinian people.

The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has taken its share to assist financially the Palestinian authority in order to alleviate the humanitarian suffering of the Palestinian people which has deepened as a result of restrictions on aid applied by certain countries, he said.

In the context of Israel's defiance of the international community, particular reference should be made to the infamous Israeli nuclear weapons program, which is a showcase of five decades of concealment and deception and total disregard for the demand o f the international community, echoed in the NPT 2000 review conference, which by name called upon it to accede to the NPT immediately and without any condition.

Nuclear weapons in the hands of a regime with an unparalleled record of state terrorism and resort to aggression and the threat of force against other countries presents a real threat to regional and global peace and security and the non-proliferation re gime, Zarif said.

This threat needs to be urgently and decisively addressed by the international community and the initiative for the creation of a zone free from weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East should be actively pursued, he said.

The tower blocks are the latest and largest evidence of the destruction of Islamic heritage that has wiped almost all of the historic city from the physical landscape. As revealed in The Independent last August,the historic cities of Mecca and Medina are under an unprecedented assault from religious zealots and their commercial backers.

Writing in response to the article, Prince Turki al-Faisal said that Saudi Arabia was spending more than $19bn (£11bn) preserving and maintaining these two holy sites. "[We are aware] how important the preservation of this heritage is, not just to us but to the millions of Muslims from around the world who visit the two holy mosques every year. It is hardly something we are going to allow to be destroyed."

This rebuttal sits at odds with a series of previously unseen photographs, published today, that document the demolition of key archaeological sites and their replacement with skyscrapers.

Saudi religious authorities have overseen a decades-long demolition campaign that has cleared the way for developers to embark on a building spree of multi-storey hotels, restaurants, shopping centres and luxury apartment blocks on a scale unseen outside Dubai. The driving force behind this historical demolition is Wahhabism ­ the austere state faith that the House of Saud brought with it when Ibn Saud conquered the Arabian peninsula in the 1920s.

The Wahhabis live in fanatical fear that places of historical or religious interest could give rise to alternative forms of pilgrimage or worship. Their obsession with combating idolatry has seen them flatten all evidence of a past that does not agree with their interpretation of Islam.

Irfan Ahmed al-Alawi, the chairman of the Islamic Heritage Foundation, set up to help protect the holy sites, says the case of the grave of Amina bint Wahb, the mother of the Prophet, found in 1998, is typical of what has happened. "It was bulldozed in Abwa and gasoline was poured on it. Even though thousands of petitions throughout the Muslim world were sent, nothing could stop this action."

Today there are fewer than 20 structures remaining in Mecca that date back to the time of the Prophet 1,400 years ago. The litany of this lost history includes the house of Khadijah, the wife of the Prophet, demolished to make way for public lavatories; the house of Abu Bakr, the Prophet's companion, now the site of the local Hilton hotel; the house of Ali-Oraid, the grandson of the Prophet, and the Mosque of abu-Qubais, now the location of the King's palace in Mecca.

Yet the same oil-rich dynasty that pumped money into the Taliban regime as they blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan six years ago has so far avoided international criticism for similar acts of vandalism at home. Mai Yamani, author of The Cradle of Islam, said it was time for other Muslim governments to ignore the al-Sauds' oil wealth and clout and speak out. " What is alarming about this is that the world doesn't question the al-Sauds' custodianship of Islam's two holy places. These are the sites that are of such importance to over one billion Muslims and yet their destruction is being ignored," she said. "When the Prophet was insulted by Danish cartoonists thousands of people went into the streets to protest. The sites related to the Prophet are part of their heritage and religion but we see no concern from Muslims."

Lay people, and in some cases even US senators could be forgiven for thinking that the House of Saud has been the guardian of the two holy places for time immemorial. In fact, it is only 80 years since the tribal chieftain Ibn Saud occupied Mecca and Medina. The House of Saud has been bound to Wahhabism since the 18th century religious reformer Mohamed Ibn Abdul-Wahab signed a pact with Mohammed bin Saud in 1744. Wahab's warrior zealots helped to conquer a kingdom for the tribal chieftains. The House of Saud got its wealth and power, and the clerics got the vehicle of state they needed to spread their fundamentalist ideology around the world. The ruler of this fledgling kingdom needed the legitimacy afforded by declaring himself " custodian of the two holy places".

But that legitimacy has come at an enormous price for the diversity of Muslims who look to Mecca for guidance. Once in charge, the Wahhabists wasted little time in censoring the Haj. As early as 1929, Egyptian pilgrims were refused permission to celebrate the colourful Mahmal rites and more than 30 were killed. At the time Egypt severed diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. Few governments have stood up to them since.

Instead, the homogenisation of Islam's holiest sites was allowed to accelerate into a demolition campaign that now threatens the birthplace of the Prophet itself. The site survived the early reign of Ibn Saud 50 years ago when the architect for the planned library persuaded the absolute ruler to allow him to preserve the remains under the new structure. Saudi authorities now plan to "update" the site with a car park that would mean concreting over the remains.

"The al-Sauds need to rein in the Wahhabists now," warns Dr Yamani. "Mecca used to be a symbol of Muslim diversity and it needs to be again." But with oil prices and profits, at record highs, there is little sign the House of Saud is listening.

Sami Angawi, a Hijazi architect who has devoted his life to a largely doomed effort to preserve what remains of the history of the world's greatest pilgrimage sites, said that the final farewell to Mecca was imminent. " What we are witnessing are the last days of Mecca and Medina."