In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh has a detailed and scary piece about Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons, aided by our new buddies the Russians: The Iran Game.

On October 24th, more than two weeks after the American air war began, Israel sent a government delegation to Washington for official talks. The delegation included Gideon Frank, the director-general of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, and Major General Uzi Dayan, the head of Israel’s National Security Council, and its purpose was to warn the Americans, not for the first time, about new evidence of Iran’s efforts to become, with Russia’s help, the world’s next nuclear power.

The Israeli message, as a participant summarized it, was characteristically blunt: the Iranian atomic-bomb program was making rapid progress, and something had to be done about it. As far as the Israelis were concerned, this meant that the Bush Administration should put Russia’s support for Iran at the top of its foreign-policy agenda.