I wonder if something is brewing.

Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian seems to think it is.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2101521,00.html

Quotes:
>>...At the Hay festival last month former Pentagon adviser and super-hawk Richard Perle talked openly of bombing Iran, offering a clue as to timing: the US would wait till it had fewer troops in Iraq, so denying Tehran an easy target for retaliation.
Now Perle is not as tightly woven inside the loop as he once was; many of his neocon comrades have fallen by the wayside. But his predictions are worth taking seriously. I remember visiting him in Washington the day Kabul fell, in November 2001. Matter-of-factly he made clear that Washington's next target was Saddam Hussein. And so he was.>>
>>Yet the dangers of a nuclear Iran are real too. Egypt and Saudi Arabia would feel compelled to match Tehran, so triggering a nuclear arms race in the most combustible region on earth. Israel would feel the menace most keenly. As even al-Ayyam, the Palestinian daily, conceded yesterday, "the Jewish state would face a mortal threat to its very existence".>>

The Israeli Defence Force has been holding joint exercises with the USAF.

See:

http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/869098.html

>>Reports on the exercise were carried in Arab media, fuelled by speculation that Israel or the United States could bomb Iran should United Nations Security Council sanctions fail to curb its nuclear program. Iran insists its atomic ambitions are peaceful.>>

The Jerusalem Post goes further:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1181228588702

>>Military plan against Iran is ready>>

My own feeling is this is much ado about nothing.

But in the Middle-East who knows?

Addendum:

Jonathan Freedland is right in pinpointing an Arab-Iranian nuclear arms race as one of the nightmares that would emerge from a nuclear armed Iran. Given the identities of most of the 9 / 11 terrorists I find the thought of Saudi nukes more unsettling than Iranian ones.

But, then again Iranian or Saudi nukes are only a possibility. The highly unstable nation of Pakistan has nukes right now. What happens if Pakistan implodes or gets taken over by a Taleban style regime

steven, you naughty boy! pakistan are good ragheads, not bad ragheads like those monstrous, devilish, crypto-terrorist iranians. their bombsare good bombs, g-o-o-d bombs.

of course the usa is pressing iran with military displays, and would like to do more. but dare they? conventional bombs lobbed into saudi arabian oilfields would expose the fragility of the global economy in a way that would give new meaning to the phrase 'oil shock'. this might not frighten perle or cheney, but i suspect dubya is at least consulting others before he starts his next "mission accomplished".

As I said DEMOS,

So far this looks to me more like smoke and mirrors than reality.

At the same time I think a nuclear armed Iran, or even the possibility of a nuclear armed Iran, could set off a chain reaction – pardon the pun – of catastrophic proportions. Imagine Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt all involved in a nuclear arms race. How would the Europeans feel about a nuclear armed Egypt?

Would these countries all be able to keep their nukes out of the hands of terrorists even if they wanted to? In the case Of Pakistan especially we already have the case of AQ Khan and his nuclear network. Members of the Pakistani ISI, acting from a combination of greed and ideology, might be persuaded to pass on a nuke to an Al Qaeda affiliate.

Overall a scary scenario.

Bali on steroids.

While I take no joy in noting America under Bush is dysfunctional in the extreme they may well act one day.
Iran Syria and the real Saudi Arabia are unlikely to become trust worthy any time soon.
Pakistan is even less so, we must one day face of with the idiots who are intent on killing us all.
A bit radical? no realistic
We could in just days face such a world as a result of events on the west bank right now.

Belly,

I think in global terms the events on the West Bank and Gaza, tragic as they may be for the individuals concerned, are a sideshow.