Because of ongoing corruption charges, Ehud Olmert said he would step down in September after his Kadima party has chosen a new leader. The main candidates are Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, a pragmatic centrist, and Shaul Mofaz, transport minister but a hawk on national security issues, including Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the ongoing, though faltering, negotiations with the Palestinians.

Golly gee, the excitement just never ends, does it? This is more fun than jumping off a bridge before noticing that the river’s gone dry.

The biggest issue facing Olmert’s successor will be the crisis over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Mofaz, a former chief of staff and defence minister, said recently that an Israeli attack on Iran was “unavoidable” because sanctions were not working. My money is on Mofaz to become the next Prime Minister and the attack on Iran to follow thereafter.

When thereafter? Olmert steps down in September, so if Mofaz gets the job, he then has about a month to form a coalition government and start governing. He could do it within a few days or not at all. Let’s take a leap of faith and assume he does it by the end of September. This leaves 2 months before the U.S. elections, plus 1 month after, to attack Iran,

If McCain wins, an attack is not necessarily imminent. If Obama wins, Mofaz would then have until Jan. 20th, 2009, our Inauguration Day, actually at least a few weeks before, to attack Iran and be assured of U.S. backing under George Bush. This is another leap of faith, that Bush would back Israel. Certainly, Obama wouldn’t. He’d be rooting for the Arabs.

As long as Olmert held the Israeli reins, it was a given that Iran would be left alone. Olmert has paid close heed to what Washington told him to do, and is clearly more dovish than some of his possible replacements, particularly Shaul Mofaz. Now the equation is changing once again and the timing is suspect because of our entering into those negotiations with Iran that we said we’d never do. We need a big club to threaten Iran with and force them to give in, and having a hawk like Mofaz ready to blow them to Hell is a pretty decent club.

If Iran backs off, the Mid-East war will be defused, but only if outside control of their weapons-grade materials is allowed and the control and oversight meet Israeli approval. Since this is a fantasy, what I see coming is a few rounds of those interminable talks that go nowhere, followed by air attacks at night.

It’s all blue sky at this point. Anything can happen. It does give the rest of us a reason to be glad we don’t live anywhere near there, though. As if we weren’t, before.