Fordo is a tiny village in northeastern Iran, numbering less than 740 inhabitants. But over this next week it could replace Syria as the pivot point for American policy in the Middle East.

This is because in 2009 Western intelligence discovered the Fordo is the site of an enormous uranium plant carved out of a mountain side, which is steadily enriching enough uranium to give Iran the atomic weapon it claims it doesn’t want, but which every knowledgeable person knows it’s determined to get, and very possibly use, against Israel.