Should terrorists anonymously attack the United States with any sort of nuclear weapon, the Obama administration, in contrast with Israel, would probably respond with press conferences, vows to hunt down and bring to justice the perpetrators of the war crime, fact-finding commissions and investigations, and national prayer meetings and healing sessions, including compulsory, politically correct quotations from the Koran.

While the world focuses on Iran as the greatest potential source of nuclear proliferation, the clearest danger may be forming somewhere in Pakistan under the direction of Zawahri and bin Laden. And unlike Iran, Al Qaeda would have no reason to develop a bomb other than to use it.

Has anyone else noticed that, now Mohamed AlBaradei is no longer in charge of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, we are suddenly seeing a more realistic assessment of what the Iranians are really up to with their nuclear programme?

Play the long game, because time, demographics and generational change aren’t on the side of the current regime.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is reiterating a previous claim that Islam is “opposed to nuclear weapons,” insisting that Tehran is not trying to build them. Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency is also calling a leaked report that Tehran is working to build a nuclear warhead “baseless.”

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair said that Iran has not decided to pursue the production of weapons-grade uranium and the parallel ability to load it onto a ballistic missile, the Washington Post reported.

Citing a continued “unusual and extraordinary threat to U.S. national security,” President Obama on Thursday extended sanctions against Iran for one year in a public notice.

For much of his administration, Bush and homeland security officials said the threat of rogue scientists or al Qaeda sympathizers cooking up terror bugs like anthrax or plague was as great as that posed by a nuclear attack.

The high-profile case of Bruce Ivins, the government researcher charged with masterminding the 2001 anthrax mailings, only heightened such concerns.

But one outcome of the heightened vigilance is the [government’s list of “select agents” has gotten a bit long. It now includes 80 naturally occurring pathogens, from the potent toxin ricin and the exotic and potentially lethal Ebola virus to the treatable brucella — a parasite that causes livestock disease on three continents.

The rest of the world may be focused on Iran’s nuclear program. But U.S. intelligence agencies, think tanks, and non-governmental organizations just can’t shake the suspicion that Iran may be trying to assemble other weapons of mass destruction, too: an arsenal of chemical and biological arms.