Iran and the United States may be poles apart politically, but when it comes to elections they have something in common. The Iranian presidential elections will be held in June 2009 but President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already been campaigning for some time. His speech to the U.N. General Assembly in New York last month will be replayed repeatedly back in the Islamic Republic to show him as an international leader of stature.

The meltdown of Wall Street can come as no surprise to major Arab governments throughout the region; we have been watching the George W. Bush administrations Middle East policies – equally reckless and ruinous to its financial strategies – melt down for years.

As the economy takes center stage in the U.S. presidential election, an even more contentious economic debate is developing in Tehran. Though elections are almost nine months away (currently scheduled for June 12, 2009), tensions over the state of fiscal affairs have already risen to the point that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei felt it necessary to interject and call for civility.

Will Israels Prime Minister designate Tsipi Livni order a strike against Iran? Highly unlikely, at least not before the November elections in the United States, and possibly not at all. The anti-Israel fear mongers in Washington and elsewhere are likely to be proven wrong once again.

The pressures for both the U.S. and Israel to attack Irans nuclear facilities have received an additional impetus from two recent House and Senate resolutions. According to William O. Beeman, professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, there is tremendous danger in two almost identical resolutions in the House and Senate calling upon U.S. President George W. Bush to "immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political and diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities."

Last months five-day war in Georgia, a tiny neighbor of Russia and Turkey, rekindled memories of the beautiful American ballad, "Georgia on My Mind," which was written in 1930 and became a famous hit only in 1960 when the popular blind American singer, Ray Charles, introduced it nationwide.

As election time in the United States and Israel draws nearer, the public discourse regarding the "Iranian nuclear threat" is intensifying. Both candidates vying for the U.S. presidency, and a few who would like to win the Israeli prime ministership, have been portraying Iran as a live bomb and an immediate threat to world peace. Indeed, Iran is not a paragon of virtue. Its aspirations exceed by far those that were described in the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which turned around a previous assessment from 2005.

The drums of war are beating louder, amplified by Irans pursuit of its nuclear agenda and the West and Israels determination not to let it do so. Continuing rhetoric by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about "wiping Israel off the map" does little to help. Meanwhile, the U.S. administration wants to see Tehrans uranium enrichment issue resolved before January 2009, when the next administration is sworn in. The clock is ticking.

It is quite understandable that Israel would be deeply disappointed by Turkeys decision to invite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for an official visit. In Israels view, such a visit will only further legitimize a leader who is reviled for his denial of the Holocaust and for his repeated existential threats to the state of Israel. The question, however, should not be how much legitimacy Ahmadinejad may garner from this visit, but whether Turkish officials could potentially engender something positive out of this foray that could benefit not only Turkey but the entire region, including Israel.

AMMAN -- No progress was made on the Iranian nuclear standoff with the West during the controversial visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Turkey, the first NATO member state to receive him, but his mere presence in this U.S.-allied country carries important political significance.