Israel faces unprecedented terror and sabotage attacks from every side and from within its territory from sleeper cells of Arab Israelis.

Iran activates trained sleeper terror cells in the Ras Tanura center of Saudi oil refining and shipping. The Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia around Ras Tanura contains a disenfranchised Shi’ite minority which have historically been denied the fruits of the immense Saudi oil wealth. There are some 2 million Shi’ia Muslims in Saudi Arabia. Shias do most of the manual work in the Saudi oilfields, making up 40 percent of Aramco's workforce.

Iran declares an immediate embargo of deliveries of its 4 million barrels of oil a day. It threatens to sink a large VLCC oil super-tanker in the narrows of the Strait of Hormuz, chocking off 40% of all world oil flows, if the world does not join it against the US-Israeli action. The strait has two 1 mile wide channels for marine traffic, separated by a 2 mile wide buffer zone, and is the only sea passage to the open ocean for much of OPEC oil. It is Saudi Arabia’s main export route.

Iran a vast, strategically central expanse of land, more than double the land area of France and Germany combined, with well over 70 million people, and one of the fastest population growth rates in the world, is well prepared for a new Holy War. Its mountainous terrain makes any thought of a US ground occupation inconceivable at a time the Pentagon is having problems retaining its present force to maintain the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations. World War III begins in a series of miscalculations and disruptions. The pentagon’s awesome war machine, ‘total spectrum dominance’ is powerless against the growing ‘assymetrical war’assaults around the globe.

Clear from a reading of their public statements and their press, the Iranian government knows well what cards they hold and what not in this global game of thermo-nuclear chicken.

Were the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld axis to risk launching a nuclear strike on Iran, given the geopolitical context, it would mark a point of no return in international relations. Even with sagging popularity, the White House knows this. The danger of the initial strategy of pre-emptive wars is that, as now, when someone like Iran calls the US bluff with a formidable response potential, the US is left with little option but to launch the unthinkable-nuclear strike.

There are saner voices within the US political establishment, such as former NSC heads, Brent Scowcroft or even Zbigniew Brzezinski, who clearly understand the deadly logic of Bush’s and the Pentagon hawks’ pre-emptive posture. The question is whether their faction within the US power establishment today is powerful enough to do to Bush and Cheney what was done to Richard Nixon when his exercise of Presidential power got out of hand.

It is useful to keep in mind that even were Iran to possess nuclear missiles, the strike range would not reach the territory of the United States. Israel would be the closest potential target. A US pre-emptive nuclear strike to defend Israel would raise the issue of what the military agreements between Tel Aviv and Washington actually encompass, a subject which neither the Bush Administration nor its predecessors have seen fit to inform the American public about.

Global Research Contributing Editor F. William Engdahl, author of ‘A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order,’ Pluto Press, is an Associate Editor of Global Research. He can be contacted via his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.