Washington's new anxieties about Myanmar are dwarfed, by more immediate and heightened US concerns about Iran.

Soon after his inauguration, President Barack Obama made a conscious effort to reach out to Iran and make a fresh start to unravel a tortuous bilateral relationship that has been poisoned ever since the Iranian revolution and the fall of the Shah.

The time for sweet-talking now seems to be over, at least as far as the Americans are concerned. A new, declassified Pentagon report warns, 'With sufficient foreign assistance, Iran could probably develop and test an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States by 2015.'

In separate comments about Iran, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said, 'We are not taking any options off the table as we pursue the pressure and engagement tracks. The president always has at his disposal a full array of options, including use of the military... It is clearly not our preferred course of action but it has never been, nor is it now, off the table.'

The 'pressure tracks', as leaked to CNN, include updating Pentagon and US Central Command plans to hit Iran's nuclear strikes. In response to these threats, whether overt or covert, the Iranians have been parading their latest homemade missiles. In mid-April Iranian armed forces chief Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, warned, 'As I have already announced, if the US attacks Iran, none of its soldiers (in the region) will go back home alive.'

Fatima Bhutto: misplaced filial loyalty?

The one Bhutto who has so far managed to avoid damaging criticism from within Pakistan is Fatima, daughter of Mir Murtaza and niece of Benazir.

Aged 27, Fatima is the author of a book about the Bhutto clan, titled Songs of Blood and Sword, which was first launched in India in the middle of April.

Reviewers have been kind to the author — 'courageous' is the most popular adjective used to describe it — and many have avoided any direct criticism by focusing instead on Fatima's personal qualities, including her good looks, her un-Islamic fondness for wine and her willingness to decorate her forehead with the 'bindi' that is favoured by married Hindu women. Those who are most enthusiastic about the book will include Pakistan's senior military commanders — those who also have the most to lose if Pakistanis insist on remaining loyal to democratic principles — because of Fatima's portrayal of such prominent Bhuttos as Benazir and her husband, Asif Zardari, the current President of Pakistan.

They come across as heartless, greedy, power-mad and not sufficiently concerned about Murtaza's death in a shoot-out with Karachi police.

Many others will sympathise with Fatima — she is, after all, the grieving daughter of a murdered father — and she has the right to ask questions about who ordered the killing of Murtaza and why. There are other related painful questions, however, that Fatima has so far chosen to avoid addressing.

Some of the most significant concerns are her ancestry on her mother's side. The woman that Fatima calls 'mummy' is a former Lebanese belly dancer called Ghinwa, who married Murtaza while he was living in exile in Damascus. Her 'biological' mother, to quote Fatima, is Fauzia, who was divorced by Murtaza when their daughter was barely three years old.

Fauzia and her sister Rehana are two Afghan sisters who married Murtaza and his younger sibling Shahnawaz when the two brothers fled to Kabul after their father, Zulfikar, was hanged on the orders of Pakistan's military ruler General Zia-ul-Haq.

A few years later, when the Bhutto brothers were living in the South of France, Shahnawaz died in mysterious circumstances, apparently after imbibing a phial of poison. Soon afterwards Murtaza divorced Fauzia, telling friends with some bitterness that she and her sister were unmoved by his brother's death.

Fatima's reluctance to engage with her mother is in sharp contrast to her idolising of Murtaza. But the portrait she has of him is probably just as inaccurate as the image she has of her mother. Murtaza was not just the innocent victim of his sister's manipulations, he was much more complicated than the gregarious, funny and large-hearted hero remembered by his daughter. He was heavy-drinking (Black Label Scotch was his favourite tipple), violent and insanely jealous of his sister, who became Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1988. 'I am the man, I should have become Prime Minister,' Murtaza kept telling his cronies. One of those cronies, Raja Anwar, subsequently published a book titled The Terrorist Prince, the life and death of Murtaza Bhutto.

Fatima says she is not interested in politics, but her book reads almost like a call-to-arms under the banner of her late father. Those who will take exception to her comments and judgements are her first cousins, Bilawal, Bakhtawar and Aseefa, Aunty Benazir's children, who also revere their own parents.

Benazir Bhutto: building bridges with Pakistan's enemies

Benazir Bhutto was rarely out of the headlines when she was alive, but even now, two years after her assassination in 2008, she continues to attract an intensity of attention that live and kicking politicians would envy.

Unfortunately for Benazir's heirs, including her husband Asif Zardari, much of the posthumous attention is generated by those who disliked her personally as representative of a feudal clan that put family interests above those of the country.

Those who fear a revival of Bhutto family popularity as Pakistan embarks on a fresh attempt to live with a democratic framework are behind a whispering campaign that Benazir was inherently untrustworthy because she was ready to strike deals with the country's enemies.

'Does India recall how I helped curb the Sikh militancy? India was in a mess and Rajiv asked for help,' Benazir is quoted as telling New Delhi-based Outlook Magazine. 'Does anyone remember that it was I who kept my promise to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi when we met and he appealed to me for help in tackling the Sikhs? Has India forgotten December 1988? Have they forgotten the results of that meeting and how I helped curb the Sikh militancy?'

Far more damaging are the recollections of how Benazir forged links with leaders of Israel, popularly perceived as the sworn enemy of all Muslim countries. Soon after her assassination it was the then Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, who remembered a message that Benazir sent through a mutual friend saying she would 'in the future like to strengthen the ties between Israel and Pakistan'.

Israeli President Shimon Peres called Benazir a brave woman who 'did not hide her opinions, did not know fear, and served her people with courage and rare capability.' He added, 'I had the chance to meet her on several occasions, in which she expressed interest in Israel and said that she hoped to visit upon returning to power. Benazir was a charismatic leader and a fighter for peace in her country and across the world.'

Most intriguing are the meetings Benazir had in New York with Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, who described her as 'an incredibly impressive person, one of the most impressive in terms of her intellect, charm, and charisma that I've ever met'. He added, 'Bhutto was interested in normalizing relations with Israel, she was interested in me relaying that information to Washington and the US, which I did...we were in touch since that meeting by e-mail several times and she expressed concern about her personal safety.'

Concerns about her personal safety seem to be one of the reasons Benazir reached out to the Israelis, at least that seems to be the assessment of a leading Israeli daily newspaper, Ma'ariv, which reported how she 'desperately' asked Mossad and others to help with her personal protection only weeks before she was killed.

'President Pervez Musharaf's men would not let her protect herself adequately: she was not allowed to use dark-paned windows in her motorcade or use equipment for location of roadside explosives,' the Ma'ariv report said, adding that Benazir suspected Musharaf wanted to make her an easy target for assassins.

Myanmar to join nuclear club?

Strategic experts have sufficient reason for sleepless nights when they consider the worldwide spread of nuclear weapons technology and the ambitions of those Third World countries who make no secret of their desire to join the nuclear club. North Korea, for example, has carried out a nuclear test and, if the experts are to be believed, Iran will soon be in a position to do the same.

Now another country in Asia, Myanmar, has also entered the stakes as a nuclear wannabe that threatens the delicate balance of power that prevails in South and South East Asia.

The immediate cause of concern springs from a recent study by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security which says there are 'sound reasons to suspect that the military regime (in Myanmar) might be pursuing a long-term strategy to make nuclear weapons'.

It is no secret that the paranoid military rulers of Myanmar feel insecure. They have kept the country's leading dissident, Nobel Peace Prize-winning pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest for the best part of 20 years. The generals also fear that they could one day be the victims of a military invasion sponsored and supported by the US.

US experts suspect the generals have been looking for nuclear assistance from North Korea to make them less vulnerable to outside attack. The two countries broke off diplomatic ties in 1983 after North Korean agents were accused of setting off a bomb in Rangoon that killed members of a visiting South Korean delegation and four citizens of Myanmar. Diplomatic and military links between the two countries were restored three years ago in 2007. Ever since the evolving ties between Pyongyang and Rangoon have come under close international scrutiny.

Last year the Japanese authorities disclosed that they had broken up a smuggling ring that was trying to export a magnetometer — a device used to make uranium gas centrifuges — via a third country. It later turned out that the purchase of the magnetometer had been organised with the help of a trading company that has established links with North Korea.

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