It was an unexpectedly optimistic piece. Ahmadinejad was allowed to speak at length and appeared relaxed and informed while fielding questions. If the excerpts were representative and the translation accurate, he appeared to be credibly attempting to defuse the crisis.

Naturally we need to compensate for spin whatever the source, and Russian news tailored for a foreign audience has a spin no less than Wolf Blitzer's Panic Room. Knowing that, I was still taken aback by the absolute unfamiliarity of the same press conference when soon after I started reading accounts of it in the Western media. The accent was almost entirely upon provocation, not concilation: the UN "lacks guts" to impose sanctions; "Defiant Iran in threat to quit nuclear treaty"; and "Iranian President insists 'Israel can not continue to live.'"

There's a Central Casting-like quality to Ahmadinejad's villainy. If he didn't exist the Pentagon would have had to create him to justify moving the goalpost to Tehren. And perhaps they did. (The election fraud, rule by crisis and religious fascism are certainly familiar enough. A reformist Iranian government was the war party's nightmare.) But did he really say that? Did he insist that Israel must die? The headline is drawn from this quote, provided without context: "We say that this fake regime cannot logically continue to live." To arrive at the headline, the government has to be conflated with the nation. Likewise we could say about the Bush administration, and with considerable accuracy, that "this fake regime cannot logically continue to survive." (Without knowing Farsi I'll presume that the original could be translated as either "to live" or "to survive.") And is that the same as saying America must die?

Ahmadinejad says the darnedest things, but perhaps, when translated, his rhetoric is subject to overinflation by parties interested in conflict.

But perhaps it doesn't matter. Does it matter that we've barely learned how to pronounce his name before he's become This Year's Hitler? It doesn't matter what anyone says at this suddenly late stage, past the fail safe point of arrested anticipation. Iran and the United States do not see the need to talk to each other, and the go-between media appears only to egg them on like a pack of jumpy kids itching for the stimulus of a good after-school fight. (How's June sound?)

All things being equal, a chorus of just one wise word, something like "Enough," should be sufficient now to deter the Bush regime which, judging by the politics alone, ought to be the most vulnerable since Nixon's circa 1974. But nothing's equal anymore, and American politics is putting on an ever-more piss-poor pantomime of representative government. The old vocabularies have expired. Throw their lexicons on the Lexus, and burn the Lexus. We need to learn a new language before we can speak this truth to that power.

"Of all the threats we face, Iran is the biggest. The world must not wait. It must do everything necessary on a diplomatic level in order to stop its nuclear activity," Reuters reported Mr Mofaz telling a conference on Iran at Tel Aviv University.

He added: "Since Hitler we have not faced such a threat".

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, later called on Israeli Jews to leave the Middle East and "return to their fatherlands" in Europe.

"We say that this fake regime [Israel] cannot ... logically continue to live," he told a press conference, according to an Associated Press translation.

"Open the doors [of Europe] and let the Jews go back to their own countries," he told reporters.

Mr Ahmadinejad also suggested that Iran could pull out of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the nuclear non-proliferation treaty if sanctions were imposed. The UN security council has given Iran until April 28 to suspend uranium enrichment, which it this month claimed to have mastered.

"Working in the framework of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and the agency is our concrete policy," he said. "[But] if we see that they are violating our rights, or they don't want to accept [our rights], well, we will reconsider."

"What has more than 30 years of membership in the agency given us?"

The treaty permits a signatory nation to enrich uranium in order to generate electricity, but the US and EU have pressed Iran to obtain its nuclear fuel from elsewhere after a clandestine enrichment programme was uncovered in 2002.

Mr Ahmadinejad said he did not believe the security council would impose sanctions. "Those who speak about sanctions would be damaged more [than Iran]," he told the press conference. "But no particular event will happen, don't worry."

He said that Iran's longest-range missile, Shahab-III, had a maximum range of 1,200-1,500 kilometres, which meant that Iran could not attack North America or Western Europe. "No substantial evidence has yet been found that Iran has nuclear weapons, and anyone saying that Iran is a threat to the world is lying and deceiving the world," Margolis said. He said that Bush's statement about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction had "proved baseless". The US and Israel were planning to attack Iran's nuclear infrastructure and major military installations, he said.

Margolis said that Iran had been trying to acquire nuclear weapons since 1970, when it signed an agreement with Israel to provide it with nuclear warheads and medium range missiles. He said that Pakistani intelligence sources had told him that decades ago, Iran had offered to pay for Pakistan's entire defence budget for 10 years in exchange for nuclear technology. "Why shouldn't Iran have nuclear weapons? It is surrounded by nuclear powers like Pakistan, Russia, Israel and India," Margolis said. He said that the US was providing India with nuclear secrets and the latest nuclear technology in spite of the fact that the latter had not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. He said that India is developing submarine-launched missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles with a range of 7,000 miles. "With these weapons, India can strike even the US, but the Bush administration is still providing India with modern nuclear technology," he said. He said that the US had supplied Israel with bomber airplanes, which could travel to Iran and even Pakistan. It had also given Israel around 500 "penetrating bombs, which are very lethal".

He said that a US or Israeli attack on Iran could be "very dangerous", as Iran had the ability to "punish American forces in Iraq". He said that the present Iraqi government was a Shia government which is very close to Iran. "So an attack on Iran can outrage the Shia community of Iraq," he said. Margolis said that Iran had the ability to launch "commando attacks" on US forces in the gulf. "Iran can attack US bases in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar. Iran can hamper oil exports from the area, which will create a major panic in the world and in the US," he said.

"Iranians are prepared to take huge casualties (to defend themselves) because they are a dedicated and nationalistic nation, whereas the US lacks this advantage," Margolis said, adding that Iran can even send troops to Iraq.

"Tehran appears hell-bent on defying the international community and pursuing a nuclear program that is of growing concern." - Sean McCormack, US State Department spokesman.

This followed a rare press conference with the international media in Tehran on Monday in which Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad suggested that Tehran might withdraw from the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency and the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and also said "there is no need" for US-Iranian talks on Iraq.

Because of the opacity of Iran's theocratic nationalism, outsiders may be tempted to assume that the official Iranian position is the one expressed last week in Baku, Azerbaijan, by Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najar: "The United States has been threatening Iran for 27 years, and this is not new for us. Therefore, we are never afraid of US threats."

President George W Bush and other US administration officials have frequently said that "all options are on the table" with regard to Iran's nuclear program, which the United States suspects is designed to develop nuclear weapons.

Last month, the United Nations Security Council passed a statement asking Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei to report simultaneously to the council and the IAEA board by April 28 on whether Iran had halted enriching uranium, a process that can produce fuel for nuclear warheads. To date, Tehran has refused to do so.

Javad Zarif, the Iranian ambassador to the UN, has repeatedly relayed the official position. Iran's nuclear program is peaceful; there is no proof of a military development; the religious leadership opposes atomic weapons; and Iran has not invaded or attacked any nation for the past 250 years.

The power spheres in Iran seem to bet that even in the event of a shock and awe of B-2s, missiles and bunker busters, that simply is not enough to snuff out accumulated Iranian nuclear know-how and the quest to master the nuclear fuel cycle. So the only real question would be for how many years the US would be able to slow down Iran's nuclear program.

Is that all there is? Not really.

As some Iranian analysts and ministry officials have told Asia Times Online in Tehran off the record, there are reasons to believe the leadership is misreading an avalanche of US signs related to the military and psychological preparation for a possible war.

For instance, fundamentalist Christians in the US - who support Zionism for theological reasons - unleashed a ferocious media campaign depicting Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad as the Antichrist who wants to destroy Jerusalem and prevent Jesus' comeback.

There are even indications that the Iranian leadership has not taken the Bush administration's explicit desire for regime change seriously. It's as if the leadership is persuading itself Washington would never dare to escalate the situation - especially after such US bodies as the Union of Concerned Scientists and the National Academy of Sciences have stated that a tactical nuclear strike could kill more than a million Iranians.

At Monday's press conference, Ahmadinejad, asked about possible military strikes, smiled broadly and dismissed the notion. "Military attacks? On what pretext?" he asked, adding that Iran was strong and could defend itself.

Earlier, Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar said any US military attack over Iran's nuclear program would result in a humiliating defeat for the United States, the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported.

But what if the Bush administration and the Ahmadinejad presidency were bluffing each other into a nuclear war?

Pick your faction
The key question is which Iranian leadership will have the final say. There are at least four main factions in the complex Iranian game of power politics.

The first faction is a sort of extreme right, closely aligned from the beginning to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and involved with a rapprochement with Sunni Arabs in general, while opposing even a tactical rapprochement with the US.

The faction includes the dreaded hojjatieh (a semi-clandestine, radically anti-Sunni organization) and the Iranian Hezbollah, which supports both the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Arab nationalism of Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq. Former defense minister Ali Chamkhani - whom Asia Times Online was told in Tehran could not talk to the foreign press - is very close to this faction. They are very conservative religiously and socialist economically.

The difference between the Iranian and the Lebanese Hezbollah is that in Beirut Hezbollah is much more active, pushing to be at the heart of political life and improving people's living conditions.

The role of Ahmadinejad - a former Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran) middle-rank official - in molding this first faction has been crucial. In 2005, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had the support of former president and Machiavellian master of ambiguity, Hashemi Rafsanjani, at the highest levels of power - the Expediency Council.

But as a balancing act the supreme leader also decided to boost the profile of Ahmadinejad, who happened to be totally opposed to the pragmatist Rafsanjani. To add more arabesques to this Persian miniature, Khamenei's favorite candidate in the 2005 presidential elections was actually Baqer Qalibaf, a former chief of police - basically a conservative but in favor of a controlled opening of political life, the supreme leader's own policy.

What this all means is that Ahmadinejad - even winning against Rafsanjani and Qalibaf - and as the new leader of the extreme right is not really in charge of the government. It's an open secret in Tehran that the Pasdaran intervened in the elections through massive fraud. This has led in the past few months to the formation of an anti-Ahmadinejad coalition that ranges from Qalibaf supporters to - believe it or not - pro-secular intellectuals close to former president Mohammad Khatami.

The supreme leader knew that Ahmadinejad would revive the regime with his populist rhetoric, very appealing to the downtrodden masses. But the ruling ayatollahs may have miscalculated that since they control everything - the Supreme National Security Council, the Guardians Council, the foundations, the army, the media - they could also control the "street cleaner of the people". That was not the case, so now plan B - restraining the president, and the powerful Pasdaran - is in order.

The second key faction is composed of provincial clerics, whose master is the supreme leader himself. These are pure conservatives, attached to the purity of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and more patriotic than the first faction. They are not interested in more integration with Sunni Arabs. Faithful to the supreme leader, they want to keep both progressives and extremists "in the same house" (Ahl al Bait) , with the velayat-e-faqih - the role of jurisprudence - as the supreme law of the land. Ever since the 2004 parliamentary elections - largely boycotted by the Iranian population - an association of clerics totally dominates the majlis (parliament).

But there are huge problems behind this appearance of unity. Iranian money from the bonyads - foundations - badly wants a reconciliation with the West. They know that the relentless flight of both capital and brains - which is being actively encouraged by the Rafsanjani faction - is against the national interest. But they also know this can hurt Ahmadinejad's power. Some Western-connected Iranians are even comparing Ahmadinejad's current days to the Gang of Four in China a little while before the death of Mao Zedong in 1976.

The Pasdaran for their part want to keep their fight against Zionism and go all the way with the nuclear program. This entails the extraordinary possibility of a US attack against Iranian nuclear sites counting on the complicity of a great deal of the mullahcracy - which does not hide its desire to get rid of Ahmadinejad and his Pasdaran "gang".

All going the Machiavellian's way?
The third faction is the left - initially former partisans of the son of ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Ahmad Khomeini, who died in mysterious circumstances in the 1990s. After that they operated a spectacular mutation from Soviet-style socialism into some sort of religious democracy, which found its icon in former president Khatami of "dialogue of civilizations" fame. They became the so-called progressives - and even if they lost the 2004 and 2005 elections, they are still a force, although already debilitated by the slow awakening of a younger, more secular and more radical opposition.

The fourth and most unpredictable faction is Rafsanjani's. The consummate Machiavellian masterfully retained his own power from the late 1990s, juggling between Khamenei and Khatami. He may be the ultimate centrist, but Rafsanjani is and will always remain a supporter of the supreme leader. What he dearly wants is to restore Iran's national might and regional power, and reconcile the country with the West, for one essential reason: he knows an anti-Islamic tempest is already brewing among the youth in Iran's big cities.

As head of the Expediency Council, fully supported by the supreme leader, and in his quest to "save" the Islamic Revolution, Rafsanjani retains the best possible positioning.

Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad holds as much power as his predecessor - the urbane, enlightened and sartorially impeccable Khatami: that is, not much. What Ahmadinejad's obvious excesses are doing is to solidify the support the Rafsanjani faction is getting from the intelligentsia as well as the urban youth, not to mention the "enlightened police" faction of Qalibaf. This does not mean that another revolution is around the corner - as the Bush administration's wishful thinking goes.

Apart from these four factions, there are two others that are outside the ironclad circle of supreme-leader power: the revolutionary left and the secular right. Clerics call them biganeh (eccentric), and the denomination may be correct to a point, as both these groups are mostly disconnected from the majority of the population, although they also support the nuclear program out of patriotism.

The extreme left hates the mullahcracy, but has also derided Khatami's moderately progressive agenda. As for the Westernized liberals - which include former supporters of deposed prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh and members of the Freedom Movement of Iran, an opposition party, they are becoming increasingly popular with Tehran students, who are more and more pro-American (if not in foreign policy at least in behavior and cultural preferences).

The regime may in essence be unpopular - because of so much austerity and the virtual absence of social mobility - but for millions it is still bearable. No one seems to be dreaming of revolution in Iran. What is actually happening is the slow emergence of a common front - bent on the restoration of the power of the Iranian state through an alliance with Shi'ism in Iraq, Bahrain and Lebanon.

This may be interpreted as a Shi'ite crescent by alarmist Sunni Arabs, but there's no military, expansionist logic behind it. The common front is also in favor of moving toward a more market economy and a progressive liberalization of morals and public opinion. This is what one hears in Tehran from young people, women, workers in the cultural industry, and philosophers - and it is Tehran that always sets the agenda in Iran.

If the regime does not open up, the Iranian economy will never create enough jobs over the next few years to fight unemployment among its overwhelmingly young population. A great deal of the non-oil-dependent private sector is controlled by the bonyads, whose managers are usually incompetent and corrupt clerics.

Many Iranians know that an economic crisis - high oil prices notwithstanding - will rip the heart out of the lower middle class, the regime's base, and more crucially the industrial working class, which used to be aligned with the Tudeh, Iran's communist party.

There is a way out
They key to solving most of Iran's problems lies in finding a compromise with the West - especially the Americans - regarding the nuclear dossier. For all his vocal, popular support in the provinces, if Ahmadinejad and his Pasdaran hardliners go against this national desire for stability and progress, they will be sidelined.

Demonizing Western parallels of Iran enriching a few grams of uranium as akin to Adolf Hitler's march into the Rhineland is positively silly. So far Iran has only disregarded a non-binding request from the UN Security Council. The uranium-enrichment program may be under the operational control of the Pasdaran, but Ahmadinejad does not set Iran's nuclear policy: the supreme leader does, his guidelines followed by the Supreme National Security Council, which is led by the leader's protege, Ali Larijani. Khamenei and Larijani have both substantially toned down the rhetoric; Ahmadinejad hasn't.

The point is not that Ahmadinejad is a suicidal nut bent on confronting the US by all means available. The point is that the president leads just one of four key factions in a do-or-die power play, and he is following his own agenda, which is not necessarily the Iranian theocratic leadership's agenda. Washington neo-conservatives for their part may want regime change - but that won't happen with another shock and awe.

Ahmadinejad is playing the typical Bonapartist - using a political deadlock to go all the way toward dictatorship. Rafsanjani may also be a Bonapartist, but the difference is he's not interested in dictatorship.

The ideal outcome of this whole "nuclear crisis" would be an Iran moving to a moderately liberal alliance between eternal pragmatist Rafsanjani - the only one capable of subduing the Pasdaran - and the semi-secular left, which still regards Khatami as the least bad of all possible models. It may not be paradise, but it certainly beats war.

None of this activity has been disclosed by the U.S. military, and when I wrote about Iran contingency planning last week on The Washington Post Web site, the Pentagon stuck to its dogged position that ''we don't discuss war plans.'' But it should.

The diplomatic effort directed at Iran would be mightily enhanced if that country understood that the United States is so serious about deterring their quest for nuclear weapons that it would be willing to go to war to stop that quest from reaching fruition.

Iran needs to know - and even more important, the American public needs to know - that no matter how many experts talk about difficult-to-find targets or the catastrophe that could unfold if war comes, military planners are already working hard to minimize the risks of any military operation. This is the very essence of contingency planning.

I've been tracking U.S. war planning, maintaining friends and contacts in that closed world, for more than 20 years. My one regret in writing about this secret subject, especially because the government always claims that revealing anything could harm U.S. forces, is not delving deeply enough into the details of the war plan for Iraq. Now, with Iran, it's once again difficult but essential to piece together the facts.

Here's what we know now. Under TIRANNT, Army and U.S. Central Command planners have been examining both near-term and out-year scenarios for war with Iran, including all aspects of a major combat operation, from mobilization and deployment of forces through postwar stability operations after regime change.

The core TIRANNT effort began in May 2003, when modelers and intelligence specialists pulled together the data needed for theater-level (meaning large-scale) scenario analysis for Iran. TIRANNT has since been updated using post-Iraq war information on the performance of U.S. forces. Meanwhile, Air Force planners have modeled attacks against existing Iranian air defenses and targets, while Navy planners have evaluated coastal defenses and drawn up scenarios for keeping control of the Strait of Hormuz at the base of the Persian Gulf.

A follow-up TIRANNT Campaign Analysis, which began in October 2003, calculated the results of different scenarios for action against Iran to provide options for analyzing courses of action in an updated Iran war plan. According to military sources close to the planning process, this task was given to Army Gen. John Abizaid, commander of CENTCOM, in 2002.

The Marines, meanwhile, have not only been involved in CENTCOM's war planning, but have been focused on their own specialty, ''forcible entry.'' In April 2003, the Corps published its ''Concept of Operations'' for a maneuver against a mock country that explores the possibility of moving forces from ship to shore against a determined enemy without establishing a beachhead first. Though the Marine Corps enemy is described only as a deeply religious revolutionary country named Karona, it is - with its Revolutionary Guards, WMD and oil wealth - unmistakably meant to be Iran.

Various scenarios involving Iran's missile force have also been examined in another study, initiated in 2004 and known as BMD-I (ballistic missile defense - Iran). In this study, the Center for Army Analysis modeled the performance of U.S. and Iranian weapons systems to determine the number of Iranian missiles expected to leak through a coalition defense.

The day-to-day planning for dealing with Iran's missile force falls to the U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha. In June 2004, Rumsfeld alerted the command to be prepared to implement CONPLAN 8022, a global strike plan that includes Iran. CONPLAN 8022 calls for bombers and missiles to be able to act within 12 hours of a presidential order. The new task force, sources have told me, mostly worries that if it were called upon to deliver ''prompt'' global strikes against certain targets in Iran under some emergency circumstances, the president might have to be told that the only option is a nuclear one.

Contingency planning for a bolt-out-of-the-blue attack, let alone full-fledged war, against Iran may seem incredible right now. But in the secretive world of military commands and war planners, it is an everyday and unfortunate reality. Iran needs to understand that the United States isn't hamstrung by a lack of options. It needs to realize that it can't just stonewall and evade its international obligations, that it can't burrow further underground in hopes that it will ''win'' merely because war is messy.

On the surface, Iran controls the two basic triggers that could set off U.S. military action. The first would be its acquisition of nuclear capability in defiance of the international community. Despite bluster from Tehran, the country is still years away from a nuclear weapon, let alone a workable one. We may have a global strike war plan oriented toward attacking countries with weapons of mass destruction, but that plan is also focused on North Korea, China and presumably Russia. The Bush administration is not going to wait for a nuclear attack. The United States is now a first-strike nation.

The second trigger would be Iran's lashing out militarily (or through proxy terrorism) at the United States or its allies, or closing the Strait of Hormuz to international oil traffic. Sources say that CENTCOM and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have developed ''flexible deterrent options'' in case Iran were to take such actions.

One might ask how these options could have any deterrent effect when the government won't talk about them. This is another reason why Rumsfeld should acknowledge that the United States is preparing war plans for Iran - and that this is not just routine. It is specifically a response to that country's illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons, its meddling in Iraq and its support for international terrorism.

Iran needs to know that the administration is dead serious. But we all need to know that even absent an Iranian nuke or an Iranian attack of any kind, there is still another catastrophic scenario that could lead to war.

In a world of ready war plans and post-Sept. 11 jitters, there is an ever greater demand for intelligence on the enemy. That means ever greater risks taken in collecting that intelligence. Meanwhile, war plans demand that forces be ready in certain places and on alert, while the potential for WMD necessitates shorter and shorter lead times for strikes against an enemy. So the greater danger now is of an inadvertent conflict, caused by something like the shooting down of a U.S. spy plane, by the capturing of a Special Operations or CIA team, or by nervous U.S. and Iranian forces coming into contact and starting to shoot at one another.

War planning is hardly neutral. It has subtle effects. As militaries stage mock attacks, potential adversaries become presumed enemies. Over time, contingency planning transforms yesterday's question marks into today's seeming certainty.

"Just think about if gas prices go up to $7 a gallon as a result, and everybody is saying it's because of Israel," he said.

"I don't believe it is in Israel's best interests to have the American people going into a major military action, which is what we're talking about in Iran, with significant implications on the home front in terms of terrorism and energy prices, and then having people blame Israel," said Walker.

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said "The linkage to Israel is not a good idea, because then the Iranians say, you see, it's the Zionists driving this.

"As much as we appreciate it, the question is whether it's beneficial to tie this to Israel," said Hoenlein, whose organization functions as the Jewish community's official umbrella group for speaking out on foreign policy issues.

Hoenlein pointed out that Iran is tied to terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, which operates in Lebanon and other countries. It also exercises influence over militias accused of atrocities in Iraq and aims to spread its influence throughout the Muslim world.

The danger of a nuclear-armed Iran "is a much greater one than just Israel," said Hoenlein.

In recent days, there have been reports of extensive U.S. military planning, possibly for a bombing campaign against a variety of Iranian targets. The aim, say the reports, would be to halt or, at least set back, what Iran insists is a peaceful program to produce nuclear energy. The United States, Europe and other countries fear this merely masks a covert Iranian drive to develop nuclear weapons.

Faced with increasing public clamor about a possible military conflict, Bush has repeatedly taken note of the threat a nuclear Iran would pose to Israel. Indeed, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has repeatedly called for Israel's destruction, most recently this week. On some occasions, President Bush has offered this as his sole rationale for confronting Iran.

In a March 20 speech in Cleveland, for example, Bush replied to a question about the influence of apocalyptic Christian theology on his policies with a long, rambling answer in which he raised the threat he saw from Iran and said, "Now that I'm on Iran ... the threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel. It's a threat to world peace; it's a threat, in essence, to a strong alliance. I made it clear, I'll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally, Israel."

Other administration leaders have brought Israel into center stage on Iran in a different way - suggesting strong U.S. action could be necessary to keep Israel from acting on its own.

"One of the concerns people have is that Israel might [attack Iran] without being asked," said Vice President Dick Cheney in a February 2005 radio interview, "that if, in fact, the Israelis became convinced the Iranians had significant nuclear capability, given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards."

Asked why Bush has made Israel a focus, Walker said, "because he is not very attuned to the history of the situation and he has some really strange advisers who do not understand the broader implications of this, in terms of the vast majority of the American public."

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-L.I./Queens), a frequent administration critic, said Bush's focus increases the likelihood of a backlash against Jews and Israel if a U.S.-led war on Iran turns sour.

"It's a horrible thing to do, it's dangerous," he said. "If something goes wrong, it's a setup to say we did it for Israel and not for America, and to blame the Jews."

Asked if he thought that was President Bush's intent, Ackerman said "I don't believe in accidents and coincidences in this business. They choose their words very carefully. This is not the first time the president has said this, but now it looks like it's their whole program."

Ironically, Middle East analysts say Israel's own public stand has, by and large, played down the threat that Bush is playing up.

"For past few years, the position of the Israeli government has been that Iran's nuclear program was not an Israeli issue," said Shai Feldman, director of Brandeis University's Crown Center for Middle East studies. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from 2000, said Feldman, Israel stressed the problem was "an international issue, a challenge to international stability."

Israel may have felt comfortable stepping back because the European countries and even Russia and China have cooperated with the United States on the issue in ways they did not in the lead-up to the War in Iraq, Feldman conceded. This may have allowed Israel to de-emphasize itself, he said.

"In terms of maintaining this kind of international support, to say Israel is a primary concern is extremely counterproductive," Feldman said.

Furthermore, he explained, many-though not all-Israeli analysts do not see a nuclear Iran as the kind of "existential threat" that Bush depicts. For all its president's rhetoric, many Israeli analysts view Iran's record as "on the whole, quite risk averse" and see a rational actor that would remain very aware of Israel's second-strike capability, he said.

"It's not that the day after Iran gets the nuclear bomb they drop it on Tel-Aviv," said Feldman. It is rather, the many "general geopolitical implications" of a nuclear Iran that concern Israel, he said.

"One is that it would lead other countries [in the region] to follow suit" with their own nuclear arms programs, he said. "Two is that an Iran equipped with nuclear weapons would throw its weight around the region to a much greater extent than is currently the case."

Shoshana Bryen, special projects director for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), agreed that the administration's strong focus on Israel could undermine its already shaky efforts to build a broad international coalition to pressure and possibly fight Iran.

"It's a perfectly reasonable response to the fact that Iran has threatened only two countries - the United States and Israel," said Bryen, whose group promotes strong ties between the U.S. and Israeli military. "The problem is that doing that gives countries that would like an excuse for not acting on Iran an out."

Ahmadinejad believes the more Washington focuses on Israel as a factor in the Iran debate, the more trouble it will have recruiting allies, she said.

David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, said he has already seen signs of a backlash against Jewish groups because of his group's support for a tough stand against Iran's nuclear program.

Harris' group recently published an ad in The New York Times and the Financial Times headlined "A Nuclear Iran Threatens Us All," showing a map with concentric rings delineating the current and projected ranges of Iranian missiles now deployed and under development.

"Our point is and remains that Iran is a global problem," he said. "Israel is one target, but not the only one."

But letters to the editor blasted the group and said the ad was proof of the destructive impact of the Jewish lobby, Harris said.

"So there is always the possibility of a backlash," said Harris.

Harris said his group "welcomes and appreciates the administration's expressed support for Israel. ... But we maintain this is a problem that goes far beyond Israel."

Some Jewish leaders seem conflicted - pleased that the president is actively concerned about Israel's security but uncertain about his motives.

"The fact that the president is saying, time and time again, that Israel is under our [defense] umbrella should be welcomed and encouraged," said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. But Foxman said the president's exact motives in linking Israel so closely to U.S. Iran aims are unclear.

"Is this a security umbrella on behalf of Israel? Is it meant as a message to Israel? Or to Iran? At this point nobody really knows its significance."

Jewish leaders say that while many have pushed for a forceful U.S. stand against Iran, no one is actively promoting the military option. Even some hawkish groups caution that attacking Iran could have unintended and devastating consequences.

JINSA's Bryen, for example, that a military strike with civilian casualties will probably "strengthen the regime."

There are no simple options, she continued, "which may be why the president keeps raising the specter of Israel. Everybody is hoping for a magic bullet, whether it be an Israeli or a U.S. magic bullet." n

James D. Besser is Washington correspondent;

Larry Cohler-Esses is editor at large.

"Both sides will certainly do something," he said in a reference to Iran's capability to stir trouble up in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan for the occupying US troops there.

Veteran US journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in a much-discussed recent article in The New Yorker magazine that the administration of President George W Bush has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack as the crisis with Iran over its nuclear program escalates.

Hersh wrote that "teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups". The template seems identical to the period that preceded US air strikes against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan during which a covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) campaign distributed millions of dollars to tribal allies.

"The Iranian accusations are true," said Richard Sale, intelligence correspondent for United Press International, referring to charges that the US is using the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) organization and other groups to carry out cross-border operations. "But it is being done on such a small scale - a series of pinpricks - it would seem to have no strategic value at all."

There has been a marked spike in unrest in Kurdistan, Khuzestan and Balochistan, three of Iran's provinces with a high concentration of ethnic Kurdish, Arab and Balochi minorities respectively. With the exception of the immediate post-revolutionary period, when the Kurds rebelled against the central government and were suppressed violently, ethnic minorities have received better treatment, more autonomy and less ethnic discrimination than under the shah.

"The president hasn't notified the Congress that American troops are operating inside Iran," said Sam Gardiner, a retired US Army colonel who specializes in war-game scenarios. "So it's a very serious question about the constitutional framework under which we are now conducting military operations in Iran."

Camp Warhorse is the major US military base in the strategic Iraqi province of Diyala that borders Iran. Last month, Asia Times Online asked the US official in charge of all overt and covert operations emanating from there whether the military and the MEK colluded on an operational level. He denied any such knowledge.

"They have a gated community up there," came the genial reply. "Not really guarded - it's more gated. They bake really good bread," he added, smiling.

But that is contrary to what Hersh was told by his sources, According to him, US combat troops are already inside Iran and, in the event of air strikes, would be in position to mark critical targets with laser beams to ensure bombing accuracy and excite sectarian tensions between the population and the central government. As of early winter, Hersh's source claims that the units were also working with minority groups in Iran, including the Azeris in the north, the Balochis in the southeast, and the Kurds in the northwest.

Last week, speaking on the sidelines of a Palestinian solidarity conference, Major-General Yehyia Rahim Safavi, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander, sent a warning to the US and British intelligence services he accuses of using Iraq and Kuwait to infiltrate Iran. "I tell them that their agents can be our agents too, and they should not waste their money so casually."

On April 9, Iran claimed to have shot down an unmanned surveillance plane in the southwestern province of Khuzestan, according to a report in the semi-official Jumhuri Eslami newspaper. US media have also reported that the US military has been secretly flying surveillance drones over Iran since 2004, using radar, video, still photography and air filters to monitor Iranian military formations and track Iran's air-defense system. The US denied having lost a drone.

This new mission for the combat troops is a product of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's long-standing interest in expanding the role of the military in covert operations, which was made official policy in the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, published in February. Such activities, if conducted by CIA operatives, would need a Presidential Finding and would have to be reported to key members of Congress.

The confirmation that the US is carrying out covert activities inside Iran makes more sense out of a series of suspicious events that have occurred along Iran's borders this year. In early January, a military airplane belonging to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards went down close to the Iraqi border. The plane was carrying 11 of the Guard's top commanders, including General Ahmad Kazemi, the commander of the IRGC's ground forces, and Brigadier-General Nabiollah Shahmoradi, who was deputy commander for intelligence.

Although a spokesman blamed bad weather and dilapidated engines for the crash, the private intelligence company Stratfor noted that there are several reasons to suspect foul play, not least of which was that any aircraft carrying so many of Iran's elite military luminaries would undergo "thorough tests for technical issues before flight". Later, Iran's defense minister accused Britain and the US of bringing the plane down through "electronic jamming".

"Given all intelligence information that we have gathered, we can say that agents of the United States, Britain and Israel are seeking to destabilize Iran through a coordinated plan," Minister of Interior Mustafa Pour-Mohammadi said. This sentiment was echoed on websites such as AmericanIntelligence.us, where one reader commented, "We couldn't have made a better hit on the IRGC's leadership if planned ... sure it was just an accident?"

Then, in late January, a previously unknown Sunni Muslim group called Jundallah (Soldier of Allah) captured nine Iranian soldiers in the remote badlands of Sistan-Balochistan province that borders Afghanistan and Pakistan. And in mid-February, another airplane crashed just inside Iraq after taking off from Azerbaijan and transiting Iranian airspace. The Iranian Mehr news agency reported that the "passengers on board were possibly of Israeli origin". It added that US troops have restricted access to the site to Iraqi Kurdish officials and that Western media were reporting the passengers aboard as having been German.

The Iranian government has not sat idly by and just taken these breaches of sovereignty. Early this month, an unidentified source in the Interior Ministry was quoted by the hardline Kayhan newspaper as saying that the leader and 11 members of the Jundallah group had been killed by Iranian troops. Then last Friday, Iranian missile batteries shelled Iranian Kurdish rebel positions inside Iraqi territory. They were targeting a militant group called PJAK that seeks more autonomy for Iran's Kurdish population and has been operating out of Iraq since 1999.

The former Iranian ambassador argues that in the event that US pressure on Iran continues, "the end of the tunnel" for President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's administration is "weaponization of the [nuclear] technology ... and a military strike".

"The Americans are pushing Iran to become a nuclear state. Iran just wants to be a supplier of nuclear fuel. But [with their threats] they are pushing it further."

The Security Council set on March 29 a non-binding, 30-day deadline for Iran to honor the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency's requests for it to stop enriching uranium -- which makes nuclear reactor fuel but also atom bomb material -- and cooperate with IAEA inspectors.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei is due to report to the Council on Friday on Iranian compliance, but US and other diplomats say the message will be that Iran has failed to honor the agency's demands.

This could lead to UN Security Council sanctions against Iran, although Iranian allies Russia and China oppose such a move.

The crisis over the Iranian nuclear program, which the United States claims hides secret development of atomic weapons, escalated Tuesday when Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the Islamic republic was ready to share nuclear technology with other countries.

US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said this showed "how irresponsible Iran is and why it represents, in our view, a grave threat of proliferation."

In a dramatic move, Aghazadeh was flying into Vienna "for technical talks" at the headquarters of the IAEA which has for over three years been investigating Iran's nuclear work.

Aghazadeh was to meet with IAEA director of safeguards Olli Heinonen Wednesday afternoon, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.

A diplomat close to the IAEA said Aghazadeh would also meet the agency's chief Mohamed ElBaradei but Fleming refused to confirm this.

"The Iranians are coming here to provide information. If they do, they might get to see ElBaradei, otherwise there is nothing to talk about," a second diplomat said.

The first diplomat said the Iranian visit "doesn't mean much actually. I don't see that the Iranians are going to come around. It's more of a pacifying gesture."

This is because ElBaradei was "upset" at being rebuffed after he had made a personal appeal in Tehran earlier this month for Iran to comply with IAEA demands, the diplomat said.

Iran has proposed to hold off on expanding its enrichment capabilities at a facility in Natanz if it is allowed to continue the work it has started -- an idea the US and EU states have rejected.

But Aghazadeh may float this idea again, diplomats said.

The Council could pass a resolution making full suspension of enrichment and full cooperation with the IAEA investigation of Iran's nuclear program legally binding if Iran does not heed the Friday deadline.

This could open the door to UN international economic sanctions or even military action, something the United States has not ruled out.

The United States believes ElBaradei's report will show Iran has failed to comply with the Security Council demands, US ambassador to the IAEA Gregory Schulte said in Berlin on Tuesday.

A senior European diplomat said in Vienna: "It is not going to be a good report. That is quite clear. What is there positive to report?"

Heinonen had last week put off a trip to Iran in what diplomats said was a clear sign that Tehran is failing to heed IAEA demands.

Heinonen postponed the trip when Iran refused to answer questions about possibly secret enrichment work and activities, including missile research, that could be related to making and using nuclear weapons.

The agency wants to interview military officers who may have overseen secret enrichment or "dual-use" activities and to find out if Iran hid work with sophisticated P2 centrifuges, which can enrich uranium more quickly and abundantly than earlier models.

Iranian officials used the occasion to tell US leaders that they risked yet more "divine intervention" if they dared to again set foot on Iranian soil.

"The Tabas incident should act as a reminder to US statesmen. They should not test us when they know the consequences," the hardline speaker of the Iranian parliament, Gholam Ali Hadad-Adel, told MPs.

In the early hours of April 25, 1980, a commando of 90 US special forces aboard six C-130 cargo planes and eight helicopters headed for Iran to try to free the hostages held at the US embassy in Tehran.

The helicopters had been due to land close to the seized embassy, but the operation turned into a disaster when the desert rendevous point -- near the city of Tabas some 400 kilometres (250 miles) southeast of Tehran -- was whipped by a sandstorm.

The operation, codenamed Eagle Claw, resulted in the deaths of eight US servicemen and was quickly abandoned. Its failure also contributed to the subesequent election defeat of then US president Jimmy Carter.

"Again the American authorities are showing their teeth and say that a military option is on the table. It's a good idea to remind them what happened on April 25, 1980," Hadad-Adel said.

State television meanwhile broadcast a film called "Sandstorm", an Iranian docu-drama made in 1996. The film contends that the sand particles that ruined the mission were in fact "God's soldiers" protecting the "holy regime of the Islamic republic."

At the site of the desert rendezvous -- still littered with small pieces of debris of a helicopter and C-130 -- the event was celebrated with the inauguration of a roadside service station and a mosque.

The head of Iran's 'Foundation for Preserving Sacred Defence Values', Mirfaisal Baqirzadeh, told the IRNA news agency that 3,000 supporters making the customary chant of "Death to America" were at the scene.

"Divine intervention has always been a protector of the Iranian people," his organisation said in a statement. "We should insist on our nuclear rights, since victory is with those who are patient."

On Monday, Defence Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najar warned the United States it risked "a disgraceful defeat worse than the failure in Tabas desert," should it attempt a new military intervention in Iran.

Iran and the United States broke diplomatic relations on April 8, 1980, following the taking of US hostages and before the Tabas operation.

The UN Security Council has given the Islamic republic until the end of the month to halt its uranium enrichment activities, seen as the cover for a weapons drive. Iran has refused to comply with the demand, arguing it wants only to generate electricity.

'Wrong time'

"There are a lot of countries that allow the export of dual-use technologies, and the position of the United States is that should be prohibited," said Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns.


"All countries should refrain from military sales and arm sales."

Speaking about the Russian missiles, he said:

"We hope and we trust that that deal will not go forward because this is not time for business as usual with the Iranian government."

Russia and China are both strongly resisting attempts to impose United Nations sanctions on Iran, which the US and other Western states believes is pursuing nuclear weapons.

The US arms appeal is a sign of increasing concern in Washington at the speed with which Iran is pursuing its programme, the BBC's Jonathan Beale reports from Washington.

New report

Russia says it has to see concrete proof that Iran's nuclear programme - which it is supplying with technology - is not peaceful.

IAEA resolution

The UN's position is that so far no proof has emerged that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons but nor has Iran proved that it is not.

The UN Security Council is awaiting a report from Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), next week.

Tehran has defied UN calls to stop nuclear activity, saying last week it had successfully enriched uranium.

However it denies any nuclear weapons plans, saying it wants nuclear power only for energy purposes.

Iran's ambassador to the IAEA said on Friday Tehran would "continue its full co-operation" with the body.

But the IAEA says Iran has not co-operated fully, and one of its senior inspectors has called off a visit to the country that was supposed to have taken place on Friday.