Ryan Mauro's
WORLD THREATS.COM

While all attention is now focused on the unrelenting insurrections in Iraq, a far bigger and infinitely more menacing threat is before us: Iran. The fanatics running Iran are developing nuclear weapons, not as a means to extort money from the West à la North Korea but with the express purpose of firing them. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel recently revealed that these lunatics plan to manufacture 25 or more atomic bombs a year. Ominously, Tehran is building missiles with

longer and longer ranges. Warns Netanyahu, "It's 1938, and Iran is Germany, and it's racing to arm itself with nuclear weapons."

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made all too clear that, when it comes to world Jewry, he intends to pick up where Hitler left off. Israel is his obvious first target. A couple of nuclear weapons would wipe out most of that small country's population. But what U.S. and Western diplomats fail to grasp is that Tehran's ambition for mass murder goes beyond Israel. Ahmadinejad fully intends to use nukes on Europe and, ultimately, the U.S.

Thomas Kean, chairman of the 9/11 Commission, once observed that 9/11 was less a failure of intelligence than it was a failure of imagination. Who, before that terrible day, truly thought such a thing could happen? It just seemed too fantastic to be credible. The idea that Iran would lob nukes at us or give smaller nukes to terrorists to set off on American soil seems nearly as fantastic. But where murderous zealots are concerned, the unthinkable can indeed come to pass.

Most Iranians would be quite happy to see the mullahs replaced by a less repressive, more economic-growth-oriented regime. But maniacal, murder-minded true believers don't depend on polls to determine policy. Time and again we have seen what a handful of extremists controlling a country can do. Hitler is the most notable example, but there are also Lenin and Stalin, not to mention the biggest mass-murderer of them all, China's Mao Tse-tung. And during the 1970s in  Cambodia Pol Pot and his bloodthirsty band [The Khmer Rouge] killed upward of 3 million people. There's no question that it would take a major air strike to achieve the disruption or destruction of Tehran's nuclear program. But most experts believe that it is doable without needing to employ nuclear-tipped missiles to break through Iran's extraordinarily deep (in some cases, 450 feet) underground bunkers.

Alas the Bush Administration, unnerved by its unexpected setback in last month's elections, is not likely to seriously contemplate missile strikes to curtail Iran's nuclear efforts. A growing number of Bush officials are quite ready to accommodate a nuclear-armed Iran and soothe themselves with the fantasy that these martyrizing fanatics can be deterred. They'll warn the President that, thanks to Iraq, he doesn't have the credibility to make a case for military action and that he would be opening himself up to criticism that he was using Iran to divert attention from the mess in Iraq. Besides which, the Administration has done little to prepare the American public for the possible need to launch air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Israel? A stronger government than today's would probably have already carried out air strikes. But even weak, divided and incompetent governments can, when faced with an existential threat, undertake a major military action.

The ultimate test of George Bush's presidency is coming.