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Since Harry Truman led the world in recognizing the State of Israel, the United States has been its staunches ally.  Through decades of wars and near-death experiences, America has stood by Israel with military, diplomatic and financial support.

Vice President Joe Biden is today making an official visit to Israel to achieve two major goals.  First, to reassure the Israelis that the United States remains its closest, most steadfast ally.  And second, to convince the hard-line government of Benjamin Netanyahu to enter into good-faith negotiations with the Palestinians - and thereby defuse the perpetual ticking bomb of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Over the last year tensions have emerged between Washington and Jerusalem.  Frustrated by lack of any meaningful progress in bringing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a close, the United States has pressured Israel to stop any further development on Palestinian lands, a source of tremendous friction for the Arabs.

This pressure has come as a shock to the Israeli establishment.  During the George W. Bush years American policy had tilted away from the honest-broker posture of past Republican and Democratic administrations, to a noticeable pro-Israel bias.  The prospects for a lasting peace moved further and further into the future as Palestinians felt abandoned by the historic American referee that had guaranteed them over decades of negotiations a fair deal.

But now these two very close allies are getting even closer.  The prospect of a nuclear Iran, an Iran determined to be the regional superpower that checks Israel while dominating its Arab neighbors, has once again brought the U.S. and Israel into strategic confluence.

It has been reported that the Obama Administration is of the view that lasting stability in the Middle East cannot be achieved until a final peace is struck between the Palestinians and the Israelis. 

American policy in the region has therefore focused on a simultaneous pressuring for a final peace accord while stopping Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Israel has stated in the past that it will not wait indefinitely to respond - read unilateral military strike - to what it sees as Iran's hostile intent in developing illegal nuclear weapons capability. 

Israelis see a nuclear Iran as an existential threat - a threat repeated over and over again by the Islamic Republic's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an avowed Holocaust-denier.

The U.S. has also said that it will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.  The stage is therefore set for a confrontation with Iran.

If the United States is able to broker a final peace agreement between Israel and Palestine it will not only defuse the decades-long conflict, it will also create significant good will in the Arab world - and isolate Iran in the process.

It may even pave the way to a negotiated deal with Iran. 

Or even create the political space to militarily destroy Iran's dangerous and unacceptable nuclear program without sparking a regional conflagration.

CNN reports on the Vice President's trip:

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden emphasized the close relationship between the United States and Israel as he met with Israeli leaders Tuesday, a visit that also touched on relations with Palestinians and Iran.

Biden, who arrived in Israel on Monday, first met with Israeli President Shimon Peres at his official residence in Jerusalem.

"The bond between our two nations has been and will remain unshakable," Biden wrote in the guest book. "Only together can we achieve lasting peace in the region."

Biden said he hoped the talks with Peres would be "a vehicle by which we can begin to allay that layer of mistrust that has built up in the last several years" between the two countries.

"There is absolutely no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel's security -- none at all," Biden said.

Peres began a long discussion about what the United States should do about Iran and the Middle East peace process. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statements about Israel, he said, were a coverup for the "hegemony" it seeks in the region.

"The United States should lead the Iranian policy," Peres said. "There is nobody else in the world."

From Al Jazeera a report on the challenges for peace:

From the AP, here's Vice President Biden speaking in Israel:

Slowly and deliberately, the United States is squeezing the Iranian dictatorship.

Through words and actions, the U.S. is lining up a concerted response to Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions. 

In a race against time - the Iranian regime will not be allowed to stall as it readies its nukes - American foreign and military policy are aligned to stop Iran's military ambitions.

On the diplomatic front, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is wrangling the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council - our allies, the U.K. and France, as well as our rivals, Russia and China - to implement a new round of sanctions targeting the key parts of the Iranian dictatorship apparatus.

While these negotiations appear to have brought 4 out of the 5 Council members into the fold - China is still holding out for more "negotiations" with Iran.

China is in fact facing a key test of its Big Power ambitions. 

It is governed by an amoral dictatorship as well, and not shy about using violence against its own people, therefore China is hesitant to create any precedent where the world community acts to change another country's behavior.

You never know, but one day, Chinese citizens could also rise up en masse and demand democracy from their own dictators.

Another consideration is Israel.  Iran's regime president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly threatened Israel saying that he would like to "push them into the sea" and wipe them out. 

Beyond rhetoric, the Iranians have funded and trained terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah that have carried out attacks against Israel military and civilian targets.

The current Iranian regime , as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has often said, represents an "existential threat" to Israel.  The Israeli political leadership, both right and left, have repeatedly said that they are ready to take care of the Iranian nuclear program through military means if diplomacy fails.  

So the U.S. pushes diplomatically for a solution even as it prepares militarily both through its significant presence in the Persian Gulf and through the strengthening of American allies that are also faced with the growing threat of a radicalized, heavily armed Iran.

Reuters reports:

U.S. officials said on Sunday that the United States has expanded land- and sea-based missile defense systems in and around the Gulf -- a waterway crucial for global oil supplies -- to counter what it sees as Iran's growing missile threat.

"We regard these (U.S.) measures as a conspiracy and a ploy by foreign countries to create a sense of Iran phobia," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told state television.

The U.S. deployments include expanded land-based Patriot defensive missile installations in Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

Mehmanparast attacked Washington for insinuating that Iran should be feared in the region. "Because they have lost their presence in Iran, they feel they have no foothold and in order to justify their presence (in the region) they make such an insinuation," he added.

The United States is making the deployments at a time of tension in a long-running international row over Iran's nuclear program, with Western powers calling for a fourth round of U.N. sanctions against Tehran for refusing to halt uranium enrichment.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the West did not want to see friendly relations prevail in the region, the semi-official Fars News Agency reported.

"They have always tried to keep the countries of the region weak and their existence dependent on division and insecurity ... Fortunately, there is a good understanding of the enemies' conspiracies between Tehran and Doha," Ahmadinejad said at meeting with visiting Qatari Crown Prince Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.

Here's President Barack Obama speaking last year to the AP about Iran's nuclear ambitions:

The growing menace of an Iran poised to master the nuclear cycle - and build nuclear weapons for their missiles - is pushing the world community towards a new round of sanction.

And perhaps even an attack to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities if new sanctions fail.

But not everyone thinks that an aggressive posture against the Iranian regime would be the best course at this time. 

The Iranian regime has lost much of its legitimacy as it brazenly stole national elections- and the home grown revolutionaries pouring into the streets chanting "Death to the Dictator", i.e., Grand Ayatollah Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i,  may provide an answer for how to deal with Iran. 

The Globe and Mail analyses:

Shortly before Christmas, for the first time, the International Atomic Energy Agency recognized “the possibility of military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program.”

Iran, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has to disclose any nuclear activities and allow inspections. In September, the world learned Iran was beginning to create an undisclosed enrichment facility in a tunnel beneath a mountain. That, plus Mr. Ahmadinejad's hostility and evasiveness, have made Iran's potential nuclear-weapons program a bigger worry than its authoritarianism.

But the nuclear issue is the one that can wait. The country currently has 8,000 centrifuges for making low-enriched uranium, of which only about 3,936 are being run, a number that has dropped by a thousand since last June: Iran is close to a making a weapon the way an owner of an iron mine is close to making an automobile. Their program is dropping away, probably because the protests have created other priorities.

Given this and other intelligence discoveries, the White House now believes it will be as long as three years before Iran is even capable of beginning the enrichment of its fuel into weapons-grade purity. Even then, under the most desirable of circumstances, even one weapon would take five or six additional years.

An attack on Iran would almost certainly accelerate the pace of the nuclear program, by allowing the regime to channel all its energies into militarization – exactly what the political crisis has prevented it from doing.

More importantly, an attack would end any anti-regime resistance.

Iran has come close to a major transformation several times: In the mid-1980s, and then at the beginning of the last decade. Those movements were only halted by outside forces: Saddam Hussein's attack and the war that followed; George W. Bush's “axis of evil,” which brought Mr. Ahmadinejad to power. To throw a bunker-buster bomb in the middle of democratic change now would be a historically wasted opportunity.

Reuters reports on the U.S.' calculations: