The Syrian Nuke Story & The Iran/North Korea Questions.

It was President Bush who, a year after 9/11, rewrote America's national security strategy to warn any state which might be thinking of trying to develop atomic weapons that it could find itself the target of a pre-emptive military strike. But that was the autumn of 2002, when the world looked very different from how it does in the autumn of 2007. Now it is also the case of Syria, which Israeli and US analysts suspect has been trying to build a nuclear reactor.

This time it was Israel which invoked Bush's doctrine, determining that what it believed was a nascent Syrian effort to build a nuclear reactor could not be tolerated. Some of Bush's top advisers were urging restraint before Israel bombed the site in north-eastern Syria on Sept. 6, with the aircraft having flown through Turkish air space. The raid raised questions about whether the threat was too murky and too distant to warrant military action.

It may be months or years before all the mysteries surrounding the attack on Syria become clear. The silence of the other Arab states - all Sunni suspicious of the role Damascus is playing in the Iran-led axis - which would normally condemn an Israeli attack suggested that they, too, were worried about what was happening in the Syrian desert. The silence of Turkey was equally conspicuous, especially that Syrian President Assad visited Ankara and Istanbul on Oct. 16-19.

Then there is the question of whether, and how, North Korea may have been involved, since the Syrian reactor project seemed similar to the one Kim Jong-il's government had designed to generate plutonium for a small but potent nuclear arsenal. What has become clear is that the risks of taking pre-emptive action now look a lot greater to Bush than they did in 2003, when he declared that Iraq's efforts to build WMD - weapons which turned out not to exist - justified military action.

In the Syrian case Bush has steadfastly refused to say anything. In the case of Iran, which has defied the UN for a year while it builds a nuclear infrastructure Washington believes is designed to give it the ability to make bomb fuel, Bush publicly insists there is still plenty of time for diplomacy.

The New York Times on Oct. 15 quoted Michael Green, a former director for Asia at the National Security Council (NSC) and now a professor at Georgetown University, as suggesting that Bush was acutely conscious he had 15 months left, little time for accomplishments to counter-balance Iraq. Israel's pre-emptive strike, he said, "could get in the way of his two biggest projects - getting on a path to stabilizing the Middle East, and getting North Korea to give up its weapons".

By contrast, Green said, the Israelis were thinking five or 10 years ahead. They saw a chance to thwart the Syrians and to fire a warning shot which the Iranians could not fail to notice.

Green said: "If you are Israel and you are looking at this, the value of striking Syria is that it sends a signal, including to the Iranians. This follows the Chinese proverb that sometimes you have to kill the chicken to scare the monkey". That was part of the logic of Iraq in early 2003. In those days, Bush's aides talked about how 9/11 had reduced America's willingness to tolerate the risk that a hostile state would gain WMD. They spoke of the "demonstration effect" which toppling Saddam's regime would have around the world. Under that theory, North Korea and Iran, among others, would see what happened in Iraq and reconsider their nuclear ambitions. It did not turn out that way.

North Korea evicted international inspectors after the Bush administration charged Kim's government with cheating on a Clinton-era nuclear accord, and then raced to produce enough fuel for up to 12 nuclear weapons. North Korea conducted a nuclear test, with limited success, in 2006. Whether it also sold designs or parts of its nuclear infrastructure to Syria remains the subject of investigation and debate. Iran raced ahead, too, building centrifuges which can enrich uranium, even though the UNSC has imposed some sanctions and threatened more.

While the UNSC sanctions have failed, any rumours in Washington about a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities are greeted by senior administration officials with some version of the question, "Then what?" Iran, they say, has too many ways to strike back at American interests - in Iraq, in the oil markets and throughout the Middle East. With the US military stretched in Iraq, the credibility of any American threat to take pre-emptive action elsewhere in the Middle East - and to deal with the consequences - is questionable.

Bush has made no secret of his desire to leave office with some diplomatic victories. Already, that has muted the talk about pre-emptive strikes; the president who five years ago talked constantly about the dangers of "the world's worst weapons" in Saddam's hands has been far more measured about Iran and Syria.

The New York Times concluded: "Getting a deal with North Korea to disgorge its own nuclear fuel and weapons may require looking past whatever North Korea might have sold to another country. And it may mean engaging the Syrians, even before they answer the question of what, exactly, they were building in the desert".