Here's the deal with the next couple of weeks:
The P5 + 1 are meeting with Iran on Oct 1st to discuss the issue of Iran's nuclear program. Right now Israel is the most concerned country in the world about it, and they are not going to take it for much longer if Iran doesn't take concrete steps to stop its development of nuclear technology. If nothing happens at these meetings and no severe sanctions are imposed, Israel may decide to initiate a military strike sooner rather than later.
They know that if they do this unilaterally, it will force the United States to join them in the effort, if for no other reason than the fact the Iranians' first action would be to mine the straight of Hormuz to cut off the supply of oil coming out of that region. If that happened, it would have a devastating effect on oil prices. The United States would never allow this, so if Israel attacked, they would be forced to attack Iran militarily from at least a naval perspective, if for no other reason than to keep the straight open for oil supplies. If they did that it would in effect be a declaration of war, so they might as well just aid Israel directly in the attack to try to bring overwhelming force to the table. No sense in going halfway.
The United States really doesn't want this, so the other option on the table is to impose crippling sanctions on Iran to get it to deal with this issue using non-military means. The most obvious and direct way of achieving this would be to cut off the supply of gasoline coming into the country. Iran as a nation is a net exporter of crude oil, but they don't have enough refining capacity so they are forced to import a good chunk of their gasoline for daily use.
The problem with these sanctions is Russia. Russia could easily break any sanctions or embargo by shipping gasoline into Iran through an overland route, using a couple of its former states as intermediaries. Everyone knows this, and it is one of the main issues being discussed behind the scenes.
Right now Russia is fully aware of the cards that it holds. It doesn't want to see a nuclear armed Iran any more than anyone else, but it also knows that it holds a great bargaining chip here with the United States, and it isn't about to give this up for no reason. They want concessions, and it is an open question as to how much the United States is going to be willing to compromise on the most important issues, namely its military support of Poland and the recognition of Russia's sphere of influence in the former Soviet republics and eastern Europe. Recently the US announced the suspension of a Ballistic Missile Defense installation in Poland, but this won't appease the Russians... so there are more things to come.
The most important problem here is that some of the rest of the world seems to think that Obama is weak... kind of like they thought that JFK was weak right before the Cuban Missile crisis. That crisis happened because the US didn't believe that the Soviets would try to pull something like placing missiles in Cuba, and the Soviets didn't believe that JFK had the balls to try to stop them if they did. It was a fundamental misreading on both sides, and that's what caused the crisis.
Right now we could be in a similar situation. The Iranians might see Obama as weak, and therefore would not be willing to compromise. The Russians might see the same thing, and therefore ask for too much from the US in terms of concessions for their support of sanctions, which means that sanctions wouldn't happen, or wouldn't have any teeth. And this could mean that Israel could decide to unilaterally attack, drawing the US into a war. None of this is out of the question, and it could happen sooner rather than later. It could be one of the reasons that oil prices have stayed high despite a supply glut. In any case, watch the meetings this week very carefully and see what they say about the situation... it could give you a clue as to the way things are going.
If you want to know how I know all this, I would suggest checking out
www.stratfor.com... it's a great service for getting geopolitical analysis about what is really going on in the world.
