Middle East Arithmetic

The United States is at war with al Qaeda, right? And Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, is our declared enemy, right?

So, in light of this....

Osama bin Laden is currently in Iran, where he is receiving medical treatment, meeting with top Iranian government officials, and plotting new terrorist attacks against America, a new book says.

In Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran, best-selling investigative reporter Kenneth R. Timmerman reveals the whereabouts of safe houses where bin Laden and top al-Qaida operatives have been sheltered by the Iranian regime, and describes how the regime is continuing to provide material assistance to al-Qaida even today.

Timmerman's startling revelations come from a recent defector who held a top position in Iranian intelligence. The defector provided documents and other material evidence - including a detailed description of a meeting last November between bin Laden and top Iranian government officials at a safe house in northern Iran.

Timmerman conducted extensive face-to-face debriefings with the defector in Europe and at an undisclosed location in the Middle East.

Other defectors and intelligence sources Timmerman interviewed for Countdown to Crisis corroborated key elements of the defector's story and provided new details of the deadly Iran-al-Qaida connection.

....can we not conclude that we are, in fact, at war with Iran as well?

Not that there isn't ample other evidence of it, going back to the seizure of our Tehran embassy a generation ago. None of which the CIA appears to have any desire or intent to recognize:

The CIA calls the defector a "fabricator of monumental proportions," but Timmerman reveals that this is because he tried to warn the CIA two months before 9/11 of a "massive attack on America" scheduled for September 11, 2001. The CIA brushed off his warning and since 9/11 has tried to smear and discredit him.

This is the kind of thing President Bush is up against within his own Administration, and which last fall's election obviously hasn't even slowed down. And even he has "gone wobbly" on dealing with the mullahs, which must be confronted ASAP if the GWOT is ultimately to be won.

Given the Bushies' stubborn disinclination to engage in even the ideological war (at home or abroad), much less taking the shooting war to the next logical step, and with the Clinton return on the far horizon, our ultimate defeat - perhaps in more spectacular and devastating fashion than 9/11 - becomes inexorably more plausible.

The White House is ducking the follow-through of its GWOT strategy, and public support for it is drifting toward ambivalence as a result. It's up to GDub to start beating the drums for immediate action against Syria and Iran, before the latter can deploy operable nukes.

With public enemy #1 in open league with the Terror Masters, that ought to be all the hook he should need.