Israel, widely considered the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear power, views Iran as its arch-foe, pointing to repeated calls by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to wipe the Jewish state off the map.

The international community has been wrangling for months with the Islamic republic over its nuclear program, which Tehran insists is for civilian purposes and the West fears is a cover to develop atomic weapons.

In the interview, Ayalon said he thought Bush would first try to use diplomacy in trying to halt Tehran's atomic energy program.

"First the president will try to exhaust the diplomatic process," he said. "I estimate that there is a 50 percent chance that the diplomatic effort will succeed. If not, he will advance another step and consider imposing isolation and a blockade on Iran, like the US imposed on Cuba in the past.

"If this too does not succeed, he will not hesitate to employ force," he said. "If sanctions succeed, all the better. Otherwise, he will act by all means possible, including military action."

Ayalon said that a US military operation against Tehran would differ substantially from its invasion of Iraq in 2003.

"That is not the model. This is more (a case of) employing air power combined with limited ground forces.

"Anyone who is familiar with President Bush knows that he is very determined. he is convinced of the moral supremacy of democracies over dictatorships.

"Even when he was at a low, he was not alarmed and continued to stick to his path. He also told me personally, in one of these difficult moments, that if you continue and persevere in your path, the people will ultimately follow you."

Concern over Iran's atomic ambitions figured prominently in talks in Washington this week between Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The U.S. and allies including Israel have accused Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons under the guise of a civilian energy program. Iran denies the accusation.

Ayalon, who has spent the past 4-1/2 years in Washington, said Bush would continue to pursue diplomatic efforts for now, and failing that would chose to try to isolate Iran via sanctions.

But if that tactic also failed to stem Iran's nuclear plans, Ayalon said Bush would likely use air power combined with limited ground forces to attack Iran.

"Anyone who knows President Bush knows that he is very determined. He is convinced of the moral supremacy of democracies over dictatorships ... If the sanctions succeed, all the better. Otherwise, he will act by all means possible, including military action," he said.

In public, Bush has said he backs a diplomatic solution with Iran but has refused to rule out a military strike.

The Islamic republic has said it is willing to talk to the U.S., but that Washington must first "change its attitude."

Asked if the United States would be capable of taking military action against Iran, given that it is already engaged in a debilitating conflict in Iraq, Ayalon said:

"This is not an operation on the same scale. There is no intention of employing large ground forces. That is not the model. This is more a case of employing air power combined with limited ground forces."

IAEA Resolution 533 underlines that any threat or attack on nuclear facilities already operating or under construction will be regarded as a violation of the UN Charter, IAEA letters of association and international rules and regulations and requires swift response from the UN Security Council, it said.

The letter urges the IAEA director-general to promptly condemn the Zionist threats and take proper action to prevent similar threats.

"On November 10, 2006, Ephrain Sneh, a deputy minister in the Israeli cabinet, said that the regime may launch a pre-emptive military strike against Iran's peaceful nuclear program.

"I consider it a last resort. But even the last resort is sometimes the only resort," the deputy minister said.

On October 19, 2006 Ehud Olmert, in a blatant threat against the Islamic Republic of Iran, said that Iran would have "a price to pay" if it does not relinquish its peaceful nuclear program.

He also said that Israel was making preparations for such possible attack and further threatened that Iranians "have to be afraid of the actions that may be taken by the Israeli regime." On May 15, 2006, Josef Olmert, who works closely with the Israeli mission to the United Nations in New York, threatened at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles that "Israel will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear capability, and will launch a unilateral military strike if necessary to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities"...(and further) said that "Israel cannot wait for a (possible) regime change in Iran because time is running out."

On March 7, 2006, Moshe Ya'alon, the former chief of staff of the Israeli regime's military, said at Hudson Institute in Washington DC that "Israel has a military option to counter Iran and decision-makers must take the Israeli military option into consideration."

He called the conflict "a battle between good and evil" and said support for Israel was "God's foreign policy."

The next day he took the same message to the White House.

Many conservative Christians say they believe that the president's support for Israel fulfills a biblical injunction to protect the Jewish state, which some of them think will play a pivotal role in the second coming. Many on the left, in turn, fear that such theology may influence decisions the administration makes toward Israel and the Middle East.

Administration officials say that the meeting with Mr. Hagee was a courtesy for a political ally and that evangelical theology has no effect on policy making. But the alliance of Israel, its evangelical Christian supporters and President Bush has never been closer or more potent. In the wake of the summer war in southern Lebanon, reports that Hezbollah's sponsor, Iran, may be pushing for nuclear weapons have galvanized conservative Christian support for Israel into a political force that will be hard to ignore.

For one thing, white evangelicals make up about a quarter of the electorate. Whatever strains may be creeping into the Israeli-American alliance over Iraq, the Palestinians and Iran, a large part of the Republican Party's base remains committed to a fiercely pro-Israel agenda that seems likely to have an effect on policy choices.

Mr. Hagee says his message for the White House was, "Every time there has been a fight like this over the last 50 years, the State Department would send someone over in a jet to call for a cease-fire. The terrorists would rest, rearm and retaliate." He added, "Appeasement has never helped the Jewish people."

This time Elliott Abrams, the White House deputy national security adviser who met with him, essentially agreed, Mr. Hagee said.

Leaving the White House offices, "we felt we were on the right track," he said.

Now, in tandem with the Israeli government, many evangelical Christians have focused on a new villain, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Evangelical broadcasters and commentators have seized on Mr. Ahmadinejad's comments questioning the Holocaust and calling for the abolition of the Israeli state. And many evangelicals now talk of the Iranian leader as a "mortal threat" to Israel.

Some evangelical leaders say they are wary of reports that a panel including former Secretary of State James A. Baker III might recommend negotiating with Iran about the future of Iraq. "It certainly bothers me," said Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and one of the most influential conservative Christians. "That has the same kind of feel to it as the British negotiating with Germany, Italy and Japan in the run up to World War II."

At rallies this fall for Christian conservative voters, Dr. Dobson sometimes singled out Mr. Ahmadinejad as a reason to go to the polls, arguing that Democrats could not be trusted to face down such dangers. "Hitler told everybody what he was going to do, and Ahmadinejad is saying exactly what he is going to do," Dr. Dobson explained. "He is talking genocide."

The same name, with many pronunciations, comes up repeatedly on Christian talk radio shows, said Gary Bauer, a Christian conservative political organizer. "I am not sure there is a foreign leader who has made a bigger splash in American culture since Khrushchev, certainly among committed Christians," he said.

Mr. Hagee, for his part, said Mr. Ahmadinejad's comments about Israel and the Holocaust were part of what motivated him to found Christians United For Israel late last year. Since the fight with Hezbollah, Mr. Hagee said, he is doing all he can to keep the pressure on United States officials to take a hard line with Iran.

When 5,000 evangelicals gathered last month for a "Night to Honor Israel" at his San Antonio megachurch, for example, Mr. Ahmadinejad was much discussed.

Mr. Hagee compared the Iranian leader with the biblical pharaoh of Egypt. "Pharaoh threatened Israel and he ended up fish food," Mr. Hagee said, to great applause.

Evangelical Christians who know President Bush, including Marvin Olasky, editor of the magazine World and a former Bush adviser, said Mr. Bush, unlike President Reagan, has never shown any interest in prophecies of the second coming.

Such theological details, however, have not kept the Israeli government and Jewish pro-Israel lobbying groups from capitalizing on the powerful support of American evangelicals. Fearing a backlash over Lebanon last July, Israeli officials and their American allies sought public statements of support from American evangelicals. Some groups declined because of risks to missionaries in the Arab world.

Dr. Dobson read a statement on his popular radio program expressing "heartache" at the civilian casualties but comparing Israel's fight to "the Biblical skirmish between little David and mighty Goliath." He explained, "There sits little Israel with its five million beleaguered Jews, surrounded by five hundred million Muslims whose leaders are determined to drive it into the sea."

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, the founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and the Israeli government's official goodwill ambassador to evangelicals, said the statements turned out to be superfluous because there was a groundswell of grass roots evangelical support.

Mr. Eckstein said he had discovered the depth of that support when he ran television commercials on the Fox News Channel seeking donations. The response, mainly from evangelicals, "burned out the call centers," Mr. Eckstein said. During the five-week war, his group added 30,000 new donors. Thanks to the influx of money, he said his organization has exceeded its income from the first 10 months of last year by 60 percent, putting it on track to pull in $80 million this year. "The war really generated a momentum," Mr. Eckstein said.

Evangelicals' support for Israel, of course, is far from uniform. Mr. Hagee is an author of several books about the interpretation of biblical prophecies. He says he believes the Bible assigns Israel a pivotal role as a harbinger of the second coming. Citing passages from Revelation and Ezekiel, he argues that conflict between Israel and Iran may be a sign that that time is approaching.

Others say they believe more generally that God maintains his Old Testament covenant with the Jewish people and thus commands Christian believers to help protect their "older brothers."

"My theology indicates that Israel is covenant land," Dr. Dobson said in an interview.

Many conservative Christians and their Jewish allies acknowledge a certain tension between the evangelical belief in a Biblical commission to convert non-Christians and their simultaneous desire to help the Jews of Israel.

"Despite all the spiritual shortcomings of the Jewish people," Dr. Dobson said, "according to scripture - and those criticisms come not from Christians but from the Old Testament. Just look in Deuteronomy, where Jews are referred to as a stiff-necked and stubborn people - despite all of that, God has chosen to bless them as his people. God chose to bless Abraham and his seed not because they were a perfect people any more than the rest of the human family."

Dr. Dobson, along with some other evangelicals, has expressed disappointment with what he saw as the Bush administration's pressure on Israel to sign the cease-fire that ended the fight.

"They began by saying they had to take a hard line, by saying they would support Israel and they ended up urging them to compromise and go home," Dr. Dobson said. "All that is going to do is allow everybody to reload. That didn't solve anything." (Mr. Hagee said that he believed the administration gave Israel "ample time" but that Israel erred by not "unleashing the full might of its ground troops" until it was too late.)

The Israeli government and its American allies have been building their alliance with evangelicals for decades. Israeli officials began working closely with Mr. Hagee and his church, for example, a quarter century ago, when he met several times with then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

The Jerusalem Post, an English-language newspaper, recently started an edition for American Christians.

The Israeli government temporarily cut off ties with the Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson after he suggested that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke might have been God's punishment for withdrawing from territory that belonged to the Biblical Israel. But then Mr. Robertson flew to Israel during the fight with Hezbollah. In a gesture of reconciliation, the Israeli government recently worked with him to film a television commercial to attract Christian tourists.

"Israel - to walk where Jesus walked, to pray where Jesus prayed, to stand where he stood - there is no other place like it on earth," Mr. Robertson says in the commercial, according to the Jerusalem Post.

James Baker - the elder Bush's campaign manager and secretary of state, charged for decades with cleaning up family messes - is now chairman of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) and has assumed the aura of a regent. He is burdened with more tasks than those specified in his commission's brief about Iraq. Not only is he developing a whole new US foreign policy, he is trying to salvage whatever can be retrieved from the wreckage of Bush's presidency for its last two years and to prevent the Republican party, having lost the crown jewel of the Congress, from being permanently tainted.

Just before the electoral doom, the neocons scurried off the sinking ship. Richard Perle, former chairman of the defence policy board (DPB), put the onus on Bush in an interview for Vanity Fair: "At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible." Kenneth Adelman, another neocon DPB member, who predicted that the invasion of Iraq would be a "cakewalk", said of Bush administration policy makers: "Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."

Yet the neocons plot to confound Baker. Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, on the advisory panel of the ISG, says the ISG member Edwin Meese will oppose the recommendations.

The neocon logic in favour of the Iraq war was that the road to Jerusalem led through Baghdad: an invasion would install an Iraqi democracy that would force the Palestinians to submit to the Israelis. Now near-unanimity exists on Baker's commission to reverse that formula. The central part of a new policy must be, they believe, that the road to Baghdad leads through Jerusalem.

In an article in the Washington Post in July, Brent Scowcroft, the elder Bush's national security adviser, who is very close to Baker, spelled out the notion that security and stability in the region, including Iraq, can only be achieved by re-establishing the Middle East peace process. Scowcroft's piece is a precis of Baker's views as well. On September 15, Philip Zelikow, Condoleezza Rice's legal adviser and a former Scowcroft protege, echoed Scowcroft's ideas in a speech at Washington's Middle East Institute. Afterwards, Cheney pressured Rice and she rebuked her closest deputy, underlining her own weakness.

Then the electoral catastrophe intervened, giving Baker leeway (and sidelining Rice). Baker even summoned Tony Blair to testify on Tuesday in order to support a restart of the Middle East peace process. If Baker were to propose that, he knows - although he will not explicitly say so - that its enactment would require the firing of neocons on the national security council and Cheney's staff, in particular Elliott Abrams, the NSC's near-east affairs director.

If Baker actually advocates what he thinks, Bush will have to either admit the errors of his ways and the wisdom of his father and his father's men - or cast them and caution aside once again.

The expulsion represents a decisive step toward the placing of the Opposition outside party legality, and guarantees that no Opposition voice will be heard during the party Congress.
[Their] aggressive activity in holding demonstrations during the revolutionary anniversary celebration and organising meetings of "conspirators" induced the Central and Control Committees to take immediate action.

Trotsky and Zinovieff will only be able to conduct an illegal political agitation, which may end in their imprisonment. Considering the implacable character of the fight between them and the orthodox wing, it would seem they are afraid of nothing and will continue to struggle.

Trotsky at bay Report extracted from "Pravda", of the discussion at the last plenary sitting of the Central Committee. Trotsky complained that the Opposition had been denounced as counter-revolutionary, referring always - amid protests - to the party leaders as the "fraction".

[He specified] "The Stalin-Bukharin fraction, which has thrown and is throwing into the inner prison of the G.P.U. splendid party men like Vassilyev, Fishelev, and many others . . ."

Petrowski: "A disgusting speech, a Menshevist speech. Frightful!"

Trotsky: "This fraction cannot stand our presence. The present regime believes in the omnipotence of force, even against its own party."

Interrupters: Menshevik.

Trotsky: "Under Lenin's leadership the general secretariat played an altogether subordinate part. (Uproar.) The situation began to change during Lenin's illness. The choice of men by the secretariat, the grouping of Stalinists in the organisation became independent of political directives.

"That is why Lenin, when he saw his retirement approaching, gave the party final advice 'Get rid of Stalin, who may lead the party to schism and downfall.'" (Uproar.)

Skvorzov-Stepanov (editor of the "Izvestia"): "An old calumny!"

Thalberg: "You gossip, tale-bearer!"

Kalinin (President of the Soviet Union): "Petit-bourgeois!"

The issue is a major topic in Montreal, where a litany of analogous incidents has come to light in recent months, and where pundits are suggesting the outer limits of official multiculturalism have been reached.

The question has even prompted the provincial government to set up an expert committee to provide advice on how to craft reasonable accommodations in public institutions like schools and hospitals.
But there are clearly still some kinks to be worked out.

The piece in the police newsletter, which the service stresses is not formal department policy, is headlined "Sometimes being ignored is respectful."
It then explains the cultural sensitivities of Hasidic Jews and says "your role, as a professional, is to facilitate exchanges with your interlocutor.
"In some cases, that could mean bringing in your male colleague to intervene."

The president of La Fraternité des policiers et policières de Montréal, which represents the city's 4,200 cops, said it was "discriminatory" for the police service to give such advice.

"We support reaching out to cultural groups. It's to our members' advantage and they do it every day, but saying that it's okay for someone to tell a female officer to step aside and let the men take over is just going too far," said Yves Francoeur, who demanded yesterday the police service retract its stand.

"We have 1,200 women in the service, gender relations are going pretty well, we've long talked about equality and there is no issue there.

"But you can't tell someone to stand aside and be quiet" because it is discriminatory.

Police spokeswoman Melissa Carroll said "this is not a new policy" and the passage in a column in the October issue of the internal newsletter L'heure juste - presented as a hypothetical scenario involving a robbery in a Hasidic bakery - simply serves to inform officers about situations they may encounter.

In some Hasidic communities - which observe an ultra-Orthodox form of Judaism - scriptural interpretations forbid men from interacting with, speaking to, or touching women to whom they aren't related by blood or marriage.

The incident is the latest in a series of high-profile cases.

Earlier this month, a Montreal YWCA made headlines - and prompted a petition from members - over a decision to install frosted windows in order to accommodate a Hasidic school across the alley.

Last summer, a suburban Montreal school board found itself at the centre of a controversy after it closed a school pool - and covered windows - to allow two Muslim female students to take a swim test.

Toronto police only accommodate requests for specific officers from Hasidic males, and anyone else who asks, when someone comes into a station in a non-emergency situation.

"If we're investigating something criminal ... whatever officer arrives on the scene, that's what they get," Const. Norman Smart said.

Constitutional expert Julius Grey warned against the type of advice in the police newsletter, saying it risks doing more harm than good.

"We should only make accommodations in order to help people integrate. I'm opposed to the ghettoization of people," said Grey.

Some Hasidic community leaders, meanwhile, hailed the pamphlet's example as a "respectful" position in regards to their religious beliefs.

"But I'm not all that complicated. If there's a male officer and female officer I'll speak to the man, but if they're both women, then I'll speak to them," Montreal shopowner Faivel Binder told La Presse.