...but here's how I see things playing out in the Middle East (and in the world) if the United States doesn't do something about it VERY soon:

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The next 5-10 years will be exceedingly...unpleasant.  In the short term (1-3 years), Israel will fight (and win) yet another costly war for its survival, but will most likely continue to fight against Iran's proxies (Hamas and Hezbollah--the immediate threats), instead of against Iran itself, for a variety of strategic and political reasons.  Israel will ultimately occupy, at least temporarily, some portion of southern Lebanon, and Assad in Damascus will eventually be killed or toppled.  Lacking support for direct intervention at home, the United States will watch this one from the sidelines, and will continue its nakedly absurdist pursuit of the "2-state solution" in "Palestine" through the usual ineffectual channels of international diplomacy.

During this time, with the West's attentions focused on the conflict surrounding Israel and its global economic and political ramifications (not to mention the ongoing crisis with North Korea, the "insurgent" war in Iraq, etc., etc.), Iran will continue to strengthen its nuclear program (in plain sight of the IAEA and its clueless paymasters in Western Europe), and will become a fully nuclear-capable rogue state by 2009 (perhaps earlier), with 10 or so viable weapons--minimum 15-25 kiloton yields each--at its disposal.   Shortly thereafter, the true global conflagration will begin, possibly with a terrorist nuclear attack on at least one American or Western target (including targets in Israel).  Saudi Arabia may also be subjected to a nuclear attack, and will simultaneously be invaded and occupied by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, in a bold push by Iran to establish a Iranian-dominated radical pan-Islamist hegemony where the "Arab world" once stood (from Afghanistan in the East to North Africa in the West).  If successful in this endeavor, the mullahs in Iran will, via nuclear blackmail, control the world's oil supply, and are thus poised to become the nexus of a de facto new world power (assisted by the patronage, economic and otherwise, of clients China, Russia, and North Korea).

The fate of the United States and Israel in all of this is not clear.  What is clear, however, is that upwards of 500,000 or so Americans will perish in WMD attacks before the end of this decade (but that figure could be MUCH higher if the U.S. bears the full impact of 2-to-5 simultaneous ground burst 20kt nuclear blasts).  

In a worst case scenario, a new holocaust begins in Israel, and America--choked by a massive economic depression that would make 1929 look like an ice cream social--is powerless to do anything about it.  In a slightly better worst case scenario, Israelis migrate en masse (again!) to an increasingly Islamicized Western Europe (where they are subjected to intense Dhimmitude at best and violent persecution/extermination at worst), and/or to the United States, and what was once Israel becomes part of the new Iranian hegemon.  Another possibility is that the United States--with 150,000 troops already forward deployed in Iraq--keeps the mullahs from advancing to the Mediterranean, and thus the Arab world splits, with the "moderate" Arab states (Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, and the Saudis) nominally aligned with what remains of the West, and the others (Iran, Syria, possibly Lebanon, and "Palestine") merging to form a large radical nuclear Islamist counter-power in the Middle East.

And the best case scenario?  We take out Iran and Syria NOW via conventional means (no nukes), and Israel and the United States enter into a long-term, open-ended, and completely overt military alliance, the result of which is that U.S./Anglosphere troops and ordnance remain in Israel, indefinitely, as a regional peacekeeping force along with the IDF.  We also strike a deal with the Saudis that keeps the U.S. from occupying their country in exchange for them dismantling their Wahhabist think tanks, mosques, and madrassas here in the States, and also for their help in eradicating armed Islamist radicals--and Islamic radicalism in general--throughout the greater Middle East (including within Saudia Arabia).

Care to guess how much stock I put in the best case scenario?

Then again, what do I know...y'know?

-Mikey