Secretary Rice’s mission to the Middle East has already failed because Syria has issued an ultimatum that augurs a world war soon enough.

The Syrian ultimatum is meant to provoke Israel and to pull America directly into the fighting. The ultimatum threatens that the attacks by Hezbollah — trained, supplied and commanded by Iranian Revolutionary Guards — will increase in intensity unless America negotiates directly with Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. The ultimatum demands that America force Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, to cease tactical strikes on Hezbollah bases and weaponry in Lebanon, to cease tactical strikes on Hamas in Gaza, and to make territorial concessions that would mean that Israel could no longer defend either Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

Knowing that America cannot agree to such an unprecedented surrender, Syria and its sponsor, Iran, are preparing for the next stage of the escalation, which is meant to draw the American military directly into the shooting war.

The current weapons of provocation are Katyusha rockets, fired at northern Israel chiefly from the coastal city of Tyre, Lebanon.

The next weapon of provocation is the Iranian-made Zelzal-2 ballistic missile. So far, the Israeli air force believes it has destroyed or accounted for about three dozen of the Zelzals inside Lebanon. However, Iran is hourly resupplying the convoys flowing from Syria to Lebanon; and there are dozens if not hundreds of more-potent tactical missiles at the ready.

At present, the Zelzal-2 missiles on their mobile launchers, under Iranian rocket crews, are deployed along the Syrian side of the Syrian-Lebanese border. When the order is given — and it may already have been — the rocket crews will push over the border crossings, park about 15 meters inside Lebanon, and launch on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The Israelis will have a few minutes to shoot down the missiles, but not many, and then a warhead of a ton of high explosives will leave a hole in Israel’s confidence in fighting on alone.

Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, yesterday publicly warned of attacks deeper into Israel.

The Iranian rocket crews can keep up this cunning barrage until Israel makes a logical decision to strike at Syria, where the Lebanese front’s Iranian command and control is billetted in Damascus. Syria is well prepared for this air campaign, and the first-rate air defense brought in from Iran, purchased from ex-Soviet suppliers, awaits the Israeli strikes. Damascus will not be a Beirut-style turkey shoot.

Meanwhile, the Iranian offensive against Israel is in parallel with the Iranian offensive to drive America out of the ummah and to subjugate Iraq. Television reports of the Lebanese Shias’ suffering have already radicalized the Shia majority in Iraq, and Prime Minister al-Maliki’s remarks last week castigating Israel are well reported. What is not yet reported is that Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Sistani and his luminaries have issued a fatwa condemning Israel for its attacks on Hezbollah. The Iranian stooge Moqtada al-Sadr has dispatched 1,500 of his Iranian-paid-for Sadr Brigade to cross into Syria and infiltrate Lebanon to fight the IDF. Also, two new, Shia-based groups in Iraq — Leagues of the People of Right Groups/the Imam al Mahdi Brigade and the Nationalist 1920 Revolution Brigade — have announced their intention to attack American forces in Iraq in sympathy with their brethren the Shia of Lebanon. The sum effect of these developments is that the Shia-dominated Iraqi government and police and army, as well as the majority Shia population of Iraq, have now moved to regarding America in Iraq as being the same occupiers as the Israelis in Lebanon. For some Iraqi Shia patriots, killing an American Marine in Karbala is the same as killing a soldier of the Golani Brigade in Tyre.

Does Ms. Rice have all this bad news as she goes forward in futile discussions with the Lebanese government? Uncertain.

Does she know that when she speaks in Beirut to Prime Minister Siniora, she is speaking directly to Assad in Damascus and the Partisans of the Mahdi in Tehran? Uncertain.

Does the State Department know that when it offers to grant Syria a role in a new Lebanon while dropping the Hairiri investigation that leads to Assad, while granting immunity to warlords Nasrallah of Hezbollah and Meshal of Hamas, and while ignoring the Persian war elephant (Iranian Revolutionary Guard generals) in command of the Syrian military, that the Syrians are convinced that they are winning with the Hezbollah provocation and that their paymasters in Iran are vindicated when they say America is panicked?

Does the State Department know that Syria and Iran aim to accelerate the provocations to guarantee that Damascus is bombed (and then Tehran is bombed) and that Iran gets what it wants: Israel beggared, Iraq inflamed, American in retreat? Uncertain.

Do Syria and Iran know that their war plans are on schedule and unchecked? Certain.

Mr. Batchelor is host of “The John Batchelor Show” on the ABC radio network. The show airs in New York on 770 AM from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m.