Moscow’s warned Washington against striking Iran. Russia’s chief-of-staff revealed on Wednesday the U.S. could attack Iran after wrapping up its campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. He claimed his American counterpart had told him about the possibility. In an exclusive interview to RT, General Nikolai Makarov outlined Moscow’s concerns.

The incoming head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog said Friday he did not see any hard evidence that Iran was trying to gain the ability to develop nuclear weapons.

The apparent re-election of hardline Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad underscores the growing threat posed by Tehran and its nuclear ambitions, two senior Israeli politicians said Saturday, urging the world not to engage in dialogue with Iran.

A growing number of U.S. intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials have concluded that there’s little hope of preventing nuclear-armed Pakistan from disintegrating into fiefdoms controlled by Islamist warlords and terrorists, posing a greater threat to the U.S. than Afghanistan’s terrorist haven did before 9/11.

On NBC’s Today Show this morning, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that President Obama has ordered him to update the plans for a US attack on Iran, plans which were last updating during the Bush Administration. Gates says the plans are “refreshed” and insists that “all options are on the table” with respect to the potential attack. It was only a month ago that Secretary Gates was warning vigorously against the potential attack, saying that it would create a “disastrous backlash” against the United States to hit Iran’s civilian nuclear facilities.

One of the overlooked aspects of Dick Cheney’s speech today was his extensive linking of 9/11 to weapons of mass destruction (including nuclear weapons), Saddam Hussein, and Iraq. That Cheney would once again lie about Iraq is no big surprise, but the fact that he told those lies once again during today’s speech should raise even more questions about the veracity of his torture defense.

President Obama won’t put an “artificial deadline” on Iran’s abandoning its nuclear weapons program but said Monday that the Islamic Republic’s obtaining a nuclear weapon would be not only a threat to Israel and the U.S. but would be “profoundly destabilizing” to the rest of the world.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan is becoming a “mortal threat” to the world, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee Wednesday. “Pakistan poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world,” Clinton said. “And I want to take this occasion … state unequivocally that not only do the Pakistani government officials, but the Pakistani people and the Pakistani diaspora … need to speak out forcefully against a policy that is ceding more and more territory to the insurgents … .”

Israel has been steadily ratcheting up pressure on the United States concerning the grave threat allegedly posed by Iran, which seems poised to master the nuclear fuel cycle, and thus the capacity to produce nuclear weapons. The new Israeli prime minister, Likud Party hawk Benjamin Netanyahu, has warned President Barack Obama that if Washington does not quickly find a way to shut down Iran’s nuclear program, Israel will. Some analysts argue that this is manufactured hysteria, not so much a reflection of genuine Israeli fears as a purposeful diversion from other looming difficulties. The Netanyahu government is filled with hardliners adamantly opposed to withdrawal from, or even a temporary freeze on, settlements in the occupied territories, not to mention to any acceptance of Palestinian statehood. On his first day as foreign minister, extremist demagogue Avigdor Lieberman, with characteristic bluster, announced that Israel was no longer bound by the 2007 Annapolis agreements brokered by Washington, which called for accelerated negotiations toward a two-state settlement.