So, September is here, Ramadan is here, and George W Bush has just over four months to cement a legacy which is looking, at best, very disappointing. With polls still showing (by and large) an Obama victory, could we be in for potentially the most controversial October surprise of all time, namely a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities?

Well, Israel says its strategic policy is now officially not to allow a nuclear Iran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered air force capacity to be enhanced and preparation efforts redoubled, and we know that Iran now has 4,000 working centrifuges. (Incidentally, check out Business Monitor Online for an in depth assessment of exactly what this means). Meanwhile, the Netherlands has reportedly just cancelled an operation aimed at infiltrating and sabotaging Iran’s weapons industry, due to an assessment that a US attack is imminent, according to De Telegraaf.

I’m not trying to scaremonger. The Netherlands’ assessment may be based on concrete intelligence, it may just be somebody’s view. We don’t know. It’s also clear that the oil market is remaining remarkably stable. Maybe traders aren’t buying the heightened talk of a strike (and, being something of a cynic, Risk Watchdog could point out that Iran is not exactly happy with the market of late – it recently said it was planning to cut output in September to push prices back up). Or maybe the fundamentals in the market are just really weak. Actually, this is not a million miles from my view on commodities – I don’t think the oil market has bottomed out yet – but that’s another story.

So what of Iranian Brigadier General Massud Jazayeri’s assessment that striking Iran would provoke World War III? Well, I hope that’s an exaggeration of the threat, but I’m pretty sure America bombing the Islamic Republic of Iran in Ramadan of 2008 would be a different kettle of fish to Israel bombing Saddam Hussein’s Osirak facilities in 1981. I wouldn’t want to be a Gulf monarch right now. (Actually I would – did you see the run-down of the world’s richest kings and queens? – but you know what I mean).

Anyway, I don’t think McCain would thank Bush for stealing his thunder and leaving him with World War III on his hands either, but then if it goes well and the Iranian threat is neutralised, it might just give him the boost he needs to bridge that (not exactly cavernous) gap between himself and Obama in the polls. If it goes wrong, and Obama wins, then that’s a very bad start for the Democrat who promised to restore the US’ moral standing in the world.

Ramadan Karim, readers.