What Karzai hadn't realized until recently was why Musharraf was saying one thing to his American and Afghan interlocutors and doing precisely the opposite. His need to placate his own pro-Taliban extremists, who govern two of Pakistan's four provinces, was only half the story.

The president general's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which has long nurtured close relations with its opposite numbers in Iran, its western neighbor, reported Tehran's intelligence apparatus and Revolutionary Guards' clandestine service, were the real victors of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The Pak assessment is widely shared by Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- and the Baker Hamilton Iraq Study Group.

Musharraf also knows how much nuclear knowhow Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, had passed on to Iran over the past 20 years. Two years ago, Iranian officials conceded to the International Atomic Energy Agency that as early as 1987 A.Q. Khan, the world's first nuclear black marketeer and Pakistan's national hero, offered the Iranian mullahs a centrifuge enrichment "starter kit." Pakistan also has a defense pact with Iran.

For Musharraf, his own intelligence reports from Iraq were not hieroglyphics. Iran, not the United States, would be the dominant foreign influence after the bulk of U.S. forces are withdrawn before the 2008 presidential campaign. Musharraf also reads, hears and sees on TV news the unseemly split in President Bush's Congressional ranks over a troop surge in Baghdad. Also challenged is the president's authority as commander in chief to enlarge the battlespace.

Musharraf and Karzai have also read the highlights of the Brookings Institution's latest Iraqi assessment and recommendations: The U.S. must draw up emergency plans to deal with an all-out Iraqi civil war that would kill hundreds of thousands, create millions of refugees and could spill over into a regional catastrophe, disrupting oil supplies and setting up a direct confrontation between Washington and Iran.

Ending an all-out civil war, says Brookings' alarmist document, would require a force of 450,000 -- thrice the present U.S. deployment even after the 21,500-strong surge ordered by President Bush.

The administration has long been in denial about what was happening off stage as Army and Marines blitzed their way to victory in April 2003. No sooner dissolved by U.S. occupation authorities than Saddam Hussein's banned Baath party was replaced by tens of thousands of Iraqis who had sought refuge in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88. Organized by Iranian intelligence agents and Revolutionary Guards, these pro-Iranian Iraqis quickly took over police stations and mayors' offices in many provinces while world attention was riveted on Baghdad.

In Basra, Iraq's second largest city, the currency of choice is the Iranian toman, not the Iraqi dinar. U.S. convoys driving north from Kuwait now pay a 40 percent surcharge to Shiite militias and Iraqi police in the south who are affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guard operators now based in Iraq, says a former CIA field officer in cell phone contact with the region.

The Shiite-dominated Iraqi political establishment cleaves close to Tehran. Iraqi ministers and parliamentarians visit Tehran frequently, meetings that go largely unreported, except in the Iraqi media. Pakistani media have also taken notice. Musharraf and other moderate heads of state in the Middle East point out that president Bush's pledge not to invade Iran does not exclude air strikes against nuclear installations.

The Central Command's new chief Adm. William J. Fallon, whose responsibilities include the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan, told the Senate Iran is maneuvering to deny U.S. access to the Persian Gulf while "destabilizing" the entire region. Outgoing Director of National Intelligence and incoming Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte says Iran's influence is growing across the region "in ways that go beyond the menace of its nuclear program." And "Busharraf," as his Pak detractors call him, knows if U.S. bombs strike Iran, he could no longer afford to be seen as a "major non-NATO ally" of the Bush administration.

Such air strikes, which knowledgeable Washington-based observers expect before summer, would trigger yet another Middle Eastern upheaval. This, in turn, would discourage NATO's European allies from pursuing their operations in Afghanistan, leaving the United States alone to hold the fort against resurgent Taliban guerrillas. The Europeans have also dug in against U.S. pressure to isolate Iran financially and commercially.

All this didn't go unnoticed by an anxious President Hamid Karzai. Shortly after he met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week, Karzai called for peace talks with Taliban -- catching one and all by surprise. The U.S. ambassador in Kabul quickly said Karzai didn't really mean what he said. But Karzai knows he can't fight city hall -- in this case Pakistan coupled with Taliban and what looks like an Iranian victory in Iraq.

Surprisingly, Karzai's new look appeasement merited only a tiny, one graph foreign news brief in the New York Times. Of all the major newspapers, only the Financial Times caught the significance of the geopolitical wind shift. It came after the U.S. pledged to pony up $10.6 billion (after already spending $14 billion) and the European Union $3.7 billion in additional aid to the Karzai government, amounts that are bound to be trimmed by national legislative branches. Consultants' fees so far: $1.6 billion.

Karzai himself is overwhelmed with corruption wherever he looks, including his own cabinet -- if not a minister, the deputy minister. Officials sold thousands of cars and trucks and at least half the equipment earmarked for police use. Millions in reconstruction money are diverted to the wrong pockets. The opium poppy's harvest of over 6,000 tons that supplies 95 percent of Europe's heroin consumption has crushed any chance of effective democratic governance. And Karzai knows some of his formerly loyal tribal leaders have already made deals with Taliban.

NATO -- a transatlantic alliance -- is gambling its future in Afghanistan. The prestigious London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies' latest report minced no words: success or failure in a country where everyone from Alexander the Great to the British empire to the Soviet empire met defeat will determine whether NATO lives -- or withers.

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