Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a long, rambling missive to US President George W. Bush this week. It ended on a somewhat ominous note that seemed to some Islamic scholars to constitute a declaration of war against the US. Ahmadinejad wrote, "Liberalism and Western-style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems."

After declaring the death of the ideals on which the United States is founded, Ahmadinejad explained that "people around the world are flocking towards a main focal point - that is Almighty God." He then challenged Bush, "Do you not want to join them?"

Experts on Islam in Washington have noted that since Ahmadinejad advocates Islamic fundamentalism as the only true religious path, his question to Bush was in fact an ultimatum to convert to Islam or face the consequences. Islamic scholar Robert Spencer put it carefully on his weblog Jihad Watch when he wrote, "this letter could be - but is not necessarily - a prelude to an attack."

Ahmadinejad's letter was delivered on Monday. One would think that if the Bush administration was concerned about the signals Teheran was sending that Bush and top administration officials would be at pains for the next several days to ensure that Iran and the rest of the world understood that the US would not be surrendering any time soon to the dictates of its sworn enemies.

Sadly, the opposite occurred.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the EU's foreign policy chiefs at the UN for a summit of the so-called Middle East Quartet. The meeting, which was the first official gathering of Quartet members since the popularly elected Hamas government assumed power in the Palestinian Authority and Ehud Olmert formed his government in Israel, was dedicated to the question of how to continue to give the Palestinians hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid even though they just elected an international jihadist organization to lead them.

Notably, at the same time that Rice was meeting with her colleagues in New York, Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal was meeting with his colleagues in Qatar. Seated at a dais with terror preacher Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi and Islamic Jihad commander Ramadan Abdullah Shalah, Mashaal called on the Arab and Islamic world to send Hamas "weapons, money and men." Mashaal reassured his audience, explaining that their "weapons, money and men" would be a force for good in the world because Hamas is engaged in "resistance, not terrorism."

It should be noted that for years Mashaal has been cultivating Hamas's ties with Iran. Ahead of Hamas's election in January, in one of his almost monthly trips to Teheran, Mashaal reportedly told the Iranian leadership that he wants Iran to view Hamas as a Palestinian version of Hizbullah. That is, like Hizbullah, in exchange for Iranian weapons, money and training, Hamas will act as Teheran's client and subordinate its actions to Teheran's command hierarchy. Iran accepted his offer.

And so, the day after Ahmadinejad wrote his war letter to Bush, Rice was meeting with her associates figuring out a way to give the Hamas-led Palestinians millions of dollars of US taxpayers' money.

While administration officials insist that Rice's decision to agree that the EU can formulate an artificial mechanism to continue to flood the PA with international monetary assistance is not an American okay to flood the PA with international monetary assistance, in fact it is just such an okay. Israel's announcement Wednesday that it would be resuming the transfer of tens of millions of dollars of tax revenues to the PA is proof that Tuesday's Quartet meeting did conclude with a green light to renew Western monetary assistance to the PA.

RICE'S DECISION to enable the funding of the Hamas-led PA is significant, and indeed disastrous for two main reasons. First, by so acting, the Bush administration is ignoring strategic realities that present immediate dangers not only to Israel but to the US as well.

Against the backdrop of Ahmadinejad's letter this week and his constant threats against the US and its allies in recent weeks and months, it is clear that Iran perceives itself as being in a state of active war against the US. It is also a fact that Hamas is now an official client of Teheran. As an Iranian satellite, an empowered and emboldened Hamas is no longer just an Israeli concern. Hamas today can and ought to be perceived as an enemy of the US as well - an enemy to whom the Bush administration just pledged $10 million in medical assistance.

Indeed, even before Hamas subordinated itself to Teheran, the movement was in a declared state of war against America. On December 17, 2001, Hamas published a joint declaration with the Islamic Jihad in which it declared, "Americans are the enemies of the Palestinian people," and Americans "are a target for future attacks." Hamas's rhetoric has customarily been imbued with virulent anti-Americanism. Hamas has financed Palestinian members of al-Qaida and in at least one instance, in 2003, it trained a naturalized Canadian citizen from Gaza in terrorist tactics for the purpose of having him carry out attacks in Canada and the US. Fortunately, Israeli security forces arrested him before he was able to carry out his mission.

As Matthew Levitt points out in his copiously documented and detailed new book, Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad, in 2004 the FBI admitted that Hamas has the capabilities to carry out attacks in the US. In August 2004, a Hamas terrorist was arrested while taking pictures of the suspension cables of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

In its present capacity as an Iranian client there can be no doubt that Hamas's willingness to take action against the US has increased. Its interest in expanding its activities beyond Israel has been on full display in recent weeks in Jordan. For the second time in so many weeks, on Wednesday a Jordanian government spokesman announced the unearthing of Hamas weapons caches in the kingdom, including Iranian-made rocket launchers. The spokesman also announced that Hamas is seeking to recruit Jordanian nationals to undergo terror training in Syria and Iran. The spokesman referred to Hamas's activities in the country as posing "a major threat to the national security of the country."