Iran is not the only country where restoration of monarchy is being considered. Neoconservative strategists have also supported returning to power the Iraqi monarchy, which was toppled in 1958 by a combination of military officers and Iraqi communists. When the Ottoman Empire crumbled after World War I, British intelligence sponsored the rise of a little-known family called the Hashemites, whose origins lay in the Saudi region around Mecca and Medina. Two Hashemite brothers were installed on the thrones of Jordan and Iraq.

For nearly a year, the neocons have suggested that Jordan's Prince Hassan, the brother of the late King Hussein of Jordan and a blood relative of the Iraqi Hashemite family, might re-establish the Hashemites in Baghdad were Saddam Hussein to be removed. Among the neocons are Michael Rubin, a former AEI fellow, and David Wurmser, a Perle acolyte. Rubin in 2002 wrote an article for London's Daily Telegraph headlined, "If Iraqis want a king, Hassan of Jordan could be their man." Wurmser in 1999 wrote Tyranny's Ally, an AEI-published book devoted largely to the idea of restoring the Hashemite dynasty in Iraq. Today Rubin is a key Department of Defense official overseeing U.S. policy toward Iraq, and Wurmser is a high-ranking official working for Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, himself a leading neoconservative ideologue.

But if the neocons are toying with the idea of restoring monarchies in Iraq and Iran, they are also eyeing the destruction of the region's wealthiest and most important royal family of all: the Saudis. Since September 11, the hawks have launched an all-out verbal assault on the Saudi monarchy, accusing Riyadh of supporting Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization and charging that the Saudis are masterminding a worldwide network of mosques, schools and charity organizations that promote terrorism. It's a charge so breathtaking that those most familiar with Saudi Arabia are at a loss for words when asked about it. "The idea that the House of Saud is cooperating with al-Qaeda is absurd," says James Akins, who served as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia in the mid-1970s and frequently travels to the Saudi capital as a consultant. "It's too dumb to be talked about."

That doesn't stop the neoconservatives from doing so, however. In The War Against the Terror Masters, Ledeen cites Wurmser in charging that, just before 9-11, "Saudi intelligence had become difficult to distinguish from Al Qaeda." Countless other, similar accusations have been flung at the Saudis by neocons. Max Singer, co-founder of the Hudson Institute, has repeatedly suggested that the United States seek to dismantle the Saudi kingdom by encouraging breakaway republics in the oil-rich eastern province (which is heavily Shia) and in the western Hijaz. "After [Hussein] is removed, there will be an earthquake throughout the region," says Singer. "If this means the fall of the [Saudi] regime, so be it." And when Hussein goes, Ledeen says, it could lead to the collapse of the Saudi regime, perhaps to pro-al-Qaeda radicals. "In that event, we would have to extend the war to the Arabian peninsula, at the very least to the oil-producing regions."

"I've stopped saying that Saudi Arabia will be taken over by Osama bin Laden or by a bin Laden clone if we go into Iraq," says Akins. "I'm now convinced that's exactly what [the neoconservatives] want. And then we take it over."

Iraq, too, could shatter into at least three pieces, which would be based on the three erstwhile Ottoman Empire provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra that were cobbled together to compose the state eight decades ago. That could conceivably leave a Hashemite kingdom in control of largely Sunni central Iraq, a Shia state in the south (possibly linked to Iran, informally) and some sort of Kurdish entity in the north -- either independent or, as is more likely, under the control of the Turkish army. Turkey, a reluctant player in George W. Bush's crusade, fears an independent Kurdistan and would love to get its hands on Iraq's northern oil fields around the city of Kirkuk. 

The final key component for these map-redrawing, would-be Lawrences of Arabia is the toppling of Assad's regime and the breakup of Syria. Perle himself proposed exactly that in a 1996 document prepared for the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), an Israeli think tank. The plan, titled, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," was originally prepared as a working paper to advise then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. It called on Israel to work with Turkey and Jordan to "contain, destabilize and roll-back" various states in the region, overthrow Saddam Hussein in Iraq, press Jordan to restore a scion of its Hashemite dynasty to the Iraqi throne and, above all, launch military assaults against Lebanon and Syria as a "prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East [to] threaten Syria's territorial integrity." Joining Perle in writing the IASPS paper were Douglas Feith and Wurmser, now senior officials in Bush's national-security apparatus.

Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), worries only that the Bush administration, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, might not have the guts to see its plan all the way through once Hussein is toppled. "It's going to be no small thing for the United States to follow through on its stated strategic policy in the region," he says. But Schmitt believes that President Bush is fully committed, having been deeply affected by the events of September 11. Schmitt roundly endorses the vision put forward by Kaplan and Kristol in The War Over Iraq, which was sponsored by the PNAC. "It's really our book," says Schmitt.

Six years ago, in its founding statement of principles, PNAC called for a radical change in U.S. foreign and defense policy, with a beefed-up military budget and a more muscular stance abroad, challenging hostile regimes and assuming "American global leadership." Signers of that statement included Cheney; Rumsfeld; Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz; Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Peter W. Rodman; Elliott Abrams, the Near East and North African affairs director at the National Security Council; Zalmay Khalilzad, the White House liaison to the Iraqi opposition; I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff; and Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.), the president's brother. The PNAC statement foreshadowed the outline of the president's 2002 national-security strategy.

Scenarios for sweeping changes in the Middle East, imposed by U.S armed forces, were once thought fanciful -- even ridiculous -- but they are now taken seriously given the incalculable impact of an invasion of Iraq. Chas Freeman, who served as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, worries about everything that could go wrong. "It's a war to turn the kaleidoscope, by people who know nothing about the Middle East," he says. "And there's no way to know how the pieces will fall." Perle and Co., says Freeman, are seeking a Middle East dominated by an alliance between the United States and Israel, backed by overwhelming military force. "It's machtpolitik, might makes right," he says. Asked about the comparison between Iraq and Hiroshima, Freeman adds, "There is no question that the Richard Perles of the world see shock and awe as a means to establish a position of supremacy that others fear to challenge."

But Freeman, who is now president of the Middle East Policy Council, thinks it will be a disaster. "This outdoes anything in the march of folly catalog," he says. "It's the lemmings going over the cliff."