The test-firings came after reports of maneuvers and increased preparations by both Israel and the United States that could plausibly herald a pre-emptive airstrike by U.S. forces against Iran's nuclear program.

Yet there have also been significant signals seeking to avoid such an outcome coming out of both Washington and Tehran in recent days.

Iranian diplomats over the past two weeks have been sounding surprisingly more moderate and constructive in negotiations on the nuclear issue with European and other interlocutors. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has said he was prepared to negotiate on the nuclear issue with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany and with Javier Solana of Spain, the European Union's top official on international and security affairs.

This move was consistent with what European diplomatic sources told UPI. They said Iranian officials had told them Tehran wanted to cool down tensions in the Middle East over the next four months till the U.S. presidential elections. Test-firing those nine missiles, including a Shahab-3 that is capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to Tel Aviv, Istanbul, Riyadh or Cairo, was obviously not calculated to do that.

Also this week, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William "Bill" Burns, one of the most experienced and respected Middle East diplomats in the U.S. Foreign Service, testified to Congress that Iran's nuclear program was not proceeding remotely as fast as Tehran liked to give the impression that it was.

And Daniel Pipes, a top Middle East adviser to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive GOP nominee for this year's U.S. presidential election, recently circulated an analysis arguing that even if U.S. President George W. Bush were to authorize a pre-emptive strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, he would not do so until after the presidential vote in November to avoid running the risk of throwing the election to Democratic front-runner Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.

It could be the Iranians see their model in North Korea's July 5, 2006, test-firing of a half-dozen missiles, included the attempted test-firing of a Taepodong-2 intercontinental ballistic missile that arguably had the range to reach the United States. The Taepodong -2 malfunctioned and crashed within 40 seconds of takeoff, proving that where ICBMs are concerned, rocket science still isn't as easy as it may look.

However, the United States certainly refrained from any pre-emptive attack on North Korea, and since Pyongyang carried out a relatively successful underground nuclear test on Oct. 9, 2006, Washington has emphasized non-violent means through diplomacy to finally resolve the North Korean proliferation issue.

It could also be that hard-liners in Iran, led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, actually fear a victory by Obama in November will lead them to losing power in next year's presidential election where relative moderate Ali Larijani, the current speaker or chairman of the Majlis, the Iranian Parliament, is currently favored as a front-runner to succeed Ahmadinejad.

Provoking a U.S. airstrike now, however risky, might be preferable to the Iranian hard-liners than what they might regard as the relative certainty of losing power internally next year if external tensions decline.

On the other hand, the Iranians appear to fear McCain much more than they fear Obama, and a military clash this year with escalating consequences could throw the November U.S. election into McCain's hands instead.

One thing is clear: Test-firing those six missiles will not deter the United States and Israel from any pre-emptive strike but is more likely to provoke them into carrying one out.

Winston Churchill famously said negotiation was always preferable to fighting or, as he put it, "To jaw-jaw is better than to war-war." But Churchill is not today required reading in Tehran.