VIENNA, Austria -- Condoleezza Rice walked into our interview this morning at 3 a.m. Washington time, ready to explain the Iran initiative that may become her foreign policy legacy. The former National Security Advisor, who acquiesced when George W. Bush declared Iran a charter member of the "Axis of Evil" rogue nations, had spent her first year and a half as secretary of state moving the administration toward this moment: a united front with the U.S., Europe, Russia and China -- all taking a more or less common approach to Iran. 

The "money shot" of their joint statement after hours of talks the night before took place in the cold, windy garden court of the British ambassador to Austria's stately home. But behind all this diplomacy was a tedious, sometimes difficult game of superpower scrabble. What's a five-letter word for "sanctions" that won't scare the Iranians off before they even read the proposal? How about "steps?"

So, while the foreign ministers hammered out a list of ways to punish Iran if it refuses to suspend its nuclear fuel enrichment, they worked almost as hard on a one-page statement that wouldn't sound too punitive. Clearly, even they didn't know how hard a task it would be.

Sitting cozily in a nearby hotel and contemplating food after an all-night flight from Washington and no chance to change clothes or nap, we reporters were suddenly summoned to the garden to hear the outcome of all this negotiating. There was a sense of electricity in the air. Russia and China were finally going to agree to pressure Iran. So we waited. It got colder. None of us had coats. An hour passed. Was there a last-minute glitch in the talks? It was now about 40 degrees, damp and windy. We were shivering and our poor camera crews were standing in position, dead on their feet. The press corps got restless. Clearly, this was going to be a huge setback for American diplomacy. 

Finally, our British hosts realized a diplomatic disaster was pending: An angry press corps, hungry and cold, and no outcome in sight. Suddenly waiters appeared with trays of beer and wine. Instantly, the surly press mob became more reasonable. Finally, the ministers interrupted their dinner to issue the statement -- and as midnight approached, we were able to file our reports. 

This morning, Secretary Rice simply sighed and said, "I'm a morning person." Apparently her diplomatic colleagues are not. But this time, another late night of talks resulted in an agreement, not the usual U.S./Russian confrontation over Iran. Now they all wait for the next step in this nuclear diplomacy.

This morning, as Secretary Rice flew home, I realized that for the first time in 25 years of covering presidents and secretaries of state, I had been to Vienna. I'd spent 24 hours across the street from the famed opera house, with signs everywhere celebrating Mozart's 250th anniversary, and I hadn't heard a musical note. Sadly for Condoleezza Rice –- a passionate fan of Mozart and Brahms –- she had spent the last day in this fabled musical city the same way. But at least her talks were more harmonious than usual.

Only hours before the president meets with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert -- today's House vote mandating an end of aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian government goes too far, according to the administration. While the administration supports the idea of blocking aid from getting into the hands of Hamas, it says the legislation ties the president's hands in making foreign policy decisions -- giving him no leeway at all to  try to influence Hamas' posture toward Israel. Similar legislation is pending in the Senate. At today's State Department briefing, spokesman Sean McCormack said: "Certainly, the president as chief executive needs to retain certain authorities to be able to fully exercise his responsibilities as the person who implements our foreign policy." Translation: the administration is leaning toward the Senate version of the bill, sponsored by Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, and Joe Biden, D-Del., which gives the White House waivers to assert presidential authority.   

The White House has been pressed by Arab leaders and some European countries to moderate its stance against permitting aid to get to Hamas. The administration has been trying to find ways to channel "humanitarian aid" only -- to prevent what Palestinian leaders and some Israelis predict could be the complete collapse of the Palestinian government. There are negotiations with Europe as to what constitutes "humanitarian aid."

So... a crisis looms. After Hamas won the election, Israel cut off Palestinian tax receipts and now the U.S. and Europe have cut off aid. As a result, the Palestinian Authority has been unable to pay government salaries for three months. An estimated two-thirds of Palestinian adults are employees of the government. Teachers -- including one recently profiled by my colleague Ron Allen -- have been working without pay and are struggling to feed their own families.

Critics in the Arab world and Europe say that the administration's hard line -- which would be enshrined in law by the legislation approved by the House -- is empowering the more radical elements in Hamas. The administration says it cannot support Hamas as long as it refuses to recognize the right of Israel to exist.

It's now a distant memory -- a long flight to Bali, 20 years ago tomorrow. I was on the White House press plane, accompanying President Ronald Reagan on a trip to an Asian summit in Indonesia. To give you an idea of how much has changed, the press charter was arranged by Pan Am. En route, the press corps was in an information vacuum and obsessing over a media dispute: Indonesia had banned two Australian broadcasters credentialed to the White House press corps from that portion of the trip because a Sydney newspaper had criticized Indonesian dictator Suharto's corrupt regime.

We were seized with the issue of censorship, banding behind our fellow journalists, especially because President Reagan's summit theme was that the "winds of freedom" were blowing on Southeast Asia. It was becoming a major embarrassment, despite the best efforts of then U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Paul Wolfowitz to negotiate a solution.

Anticipating a Today show news deadline almost immediately after we were to land, I spent the flight talking to White House officials and writing a story about how the Reagan administration was already being put on the spot by its corrupt and totalitarian Indonesian host.   

In those days before cell phones or blackberries, we arrived at night, on the other side of the world from our New York studios. I was greeted at the foot of the plane's steps by an NBC producer. There was "breaking news." The Today show needed me right away to go live with Bryant Gumbel and give them the White House reaction to Chernobyl.

What was a "Chernobyl," and why would the Reagan White House care about it? We, and the world, quickly found out. Eight years later, another American president, Bill Clinton, confronted the after-effects of the nuclear disaster, this time on a trip to Belarus. Because of the prevailing winds, 75 percent of the plant's radiation had blown from Ukraine to Belarus.  So all of us in the White House press corps were given radiation dosimeters to wear for the duration of our stop, to measure whether we were exposed to excessive amounts of the residual contaminants still in the air. Later, as we watched Clinton place a memorial wreath on a mass burial site for Stalin's victims, Hillary Clinton visited a 1,500-bed surplus American military hospital that had been transported to Belarus from Germany to serve the victims of the Chernobyl disaster.    

Now, two decades later, doctors in Boston are volunteering to treat young adults still suffering from the effects of that radiation. My colleague Preston Mendenhall recently traveled to Chernobyl to document for Nightly News what has been happening there in the intervening years. And fairly or not, America's nuclear industry is still trying to persuade the public that nuclear power is an economic and safe alternative to imported oil -- despite the legacy of Chernobyl -- and before it, Three Mile Island.

Editor's note: The broadcast will feature some of Preston's reporting this week. For more, and a video and photo retrospective of the Chernobyl disaster, visit our special section Chernobyl.MSNBC.com.

It's been a year since John Negroponte - former United Nations Ambassador, former Ambassador to Iraq - took over sixteen often-feuding agencies as America's first Director of National Intelligence.  Predictions at the time were that Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld would "run right over him." But in his first television interview since becoming "intelligence czar" (why do we persist in comparing U.S. officials with Russian monarchs?) John Negroponte insists that the bureaucrats have learned a lot of lessons from the mistakes made before 9/11 and before the Iraq war.

Could they now get it wrong on Iran - the way they did on Iraq?  A career diplomat, Negroponte says they have no higher priority than Iran, and have poured "assets" into understanding Iran in the past year.  Still, what do we know?  He says Iran is clearly determined to develop nuclear weapons, but says they are still several years away from succeeding - and even suggests they may be exaggerating their progress. What has changed in the past year? Now, he says, they now have teams from FBI, CIA, DOD, and other agencies actually sharing information instead of hiding it from each other.  For example, he says intelligence analysts wouldn't make the same mistake of hiring the Iraqi defector later nick-named "Curveball" - the spy who told the CIA Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.  Even if they did hire someone like "Curveball" - whose lies became part of presidential speeches and Colin Powell's presentation to the UN - Negroponte says critics would now be listened to before his claims became accepted wisdom. 

What keeps him up at night? Terror, weapons of mass destruction, Iran, North Korea. What we don't know. For all the improvements, it is still a 24/7 concern.  A half hour after we finished our interview, an explosion rocked downtown Kabul, reportedly close to the U.S. embassy.

A diplomatic source tells NBC News:  In response to what the Afghan government is calling "the unprecedented international outcry," the Afghan government intends to release Abdul Rahman by Monday barring any unforseen circumstances. That would mean he would be out by Sunday U.S. time. This comes after a very tough call yesterday from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Afghan President Hamid Karzai. In particular, Rice wants the issue resolved quickly before she has to testify at scheduled congressional hearings next week. The controversy threatens to blow up politically for the president at a time when billions of dollars in supplemental aid to pay for the Afghan war and reconstruction are pending.

The primary basis for the release would be the Afghan's claim that Rahman is not mentally competent to stand trial. However, Rice has warned Karzai that that is not an appropriate solution. In any case, he would probably be given security and taken out of the country -- most likely to Germany. 

Secondly:  NBC News has learned that Karzai will submit nominees for a nine-member Afghan Supreme Court to parliament for confirmation, along with his new, 26-member cabinet. The Supreme Court -- once confirmed -- would help avoid future conflicts between the Afghan Constutition's guarantee of free speech and the underlying premises of Islamic law. However, that is long-term -- the court would likely not be confirmed by the parliament for at least a month.

For all of us at NBC News, there is one name that encompasses the history of this network and our industry - Reuven Frank.  In an era of cathode tubes, long before the digital age, Reuven understood that television news was destined to transmit "experience," not only information.  In his words, "pictures are the point of television reporting."

He was the originator of network news coverage of political conventions, pairing Chet Huntley and David Brinkley in 1956 to co-anchor NBC's coverage. That launched them to fame and became the  precursor to their long run on weeknight television as hosts of the Huntley-Brinkley Report.   

Reuven was quiet, with a soft voice, but still had a commanding presence because of his sheer intellect. We all knew that we were in the presence of greatness when he was in the producer's chair. Reuven was twice president of NBC News, but perhaps his greatest contribution was not as an executive, but as a hands-on producer.  He originated  programs like NBC NEWS Overnight, the wry, offbeat late-night broadcast anchored, and more importantly, written, by Linda Ellerbee and Lloyd Dobyns.  He treasured not only pictures but words, but still understood better than anyone before or since when a correspondent or anchor should just shut up and let the viewer experience an event.  He cherished the writing of craftsmen and women like Ellerbee, Brinkley, Doug Kiker, Tom Pettit, Roger O'Neill, John Hart and Tom Brokaw.

In 1984, before the Republican National Convention in Dallas which was renominating Ronald Reagan, Reuven called me with an assignment. The Reagan campaign was producing an eight minute biopic on Reagan timed to be presented just as the networks were all going on the air with their prime time evening convention coverage.  In essence, the Reagan team was trying to hijack our coverge, locking us in, they thought, to carrying a campaign advertisement. Reuven said my mission was to report a political biograpy of Reagan of the exact same length to substitute for the RNC's video.

At the time, eight minutes of prime time television news was an extraordinary allotment of time.  We had only a few days to produce it.  There was intense pressure from the Republicans to broadcast their version, produced by their crack advertising team. Reuven refused to cave.

Television news has changed a lot since the days when Reuven and his anchor team commanded eighty percent of the viewers watching television.  But even now, wittingly or not, men and women in television news are trying to just tell stories as Reuven would have us do.

When he goes to Capitol Hill tonight, the President will have to deal with foreign policy challenges in almost every part of the world. A year after declaring that "democracy is on the march," Mr. Bush is  learning that it can sometimes be dangerous to get what you ask for. In the Palestinian territories, the stunning Hamas victory is a disaster for the U.S. peace plan -- a legislative majority dedicated to the destruction of Israel. And four years after calling Iraq, Iran and North Korea the "axis of evil" in his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush is still battling insurgents in Iraq. A radical leader is defying the world and continuing nuclear research in Iran. And America and its allies are no closer to a solution in North Korea.

Former Senator Sam Nunn, now co-leader of the Nuclear Threat Initiative -- a global effort to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials -- told me the President would have been wiser not to categorize those three nations as "the axis of evil." 

No matter how much danger they pose individually, Nunn says: "When you basically have all sort of challenges in the world, and when you specifically identify enemies in a State of the Union speech, instead of lining up your allies with you, you begin to split alliances with that kind of rhetoric."

Still, the President can point to some progress: in the last year, a new secretary of state has repaired damaged relations with Europe and helped pressure Syria to withdraw from Lebanon.

So what should the President tell the nation tonight about the state of the world?

"I think one of the things I would like for him to convey, maybe not in these words, but at least implicitly, is that we recognize that to lead, which America must do, you also have to listen," says Nunn. "That you cannot simply command the world."

In fact, the best example that America cannot simply command the rest of the world is the continuing threat posed by terrorists. That is reinforced by the recent message from Osama bin Laden and, on the eve of tonight's speech, the video from his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri. But as the President and his top advisors have discovered in the past, whenever al-Qaida releases a new tape, Americans tend to rally around the Commander-in-Chief. The war on terror will -- for many reasons -- surely be a key rallying cry for the President tonight.

A White House official immediately said that the videotape shows that Ayman al-Zawahri  is "frustrated and angry" and on the run, but the visual evidence is exactly the opposite: intelligence officials confirm that this tape shows a strident al-Qaida leader who managed to get a tape out very quickly after this month's attack in Pakistan. On the tape, Zawahri is very forceful, not only saying that the U.S. did not get him during its strike, but threatening again to deliver body bags to the Pentagon. He appears to be very self-confident and seems to feel safe in his security.

The quality of the Zawahri tape is notable in that he is clearly in a studio -- delivering a well-produced message. This is in stark contrast to the scratchy audio quality of the Osama bin Laden tape that surfaced 10 days ago. And unlike the Zawahri audio tape on Jan 20, this is clearly current, referring to the Pakistan strike. It is a "proof of life" message aimed both at his followers and at the American public.

U.S. intelligence apparently had no warning of the al-Zawahri tape, but al-Jazeera was well prepared for it. When they first broadcast the tape, NBC analyst and Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Francona, ret., points out, they had a spokesman ready in London to reply and their own analyst, Larry Johnson, pre-positioned in the al-Jazeera Washington bureau.

The new message is clearly an attempt to undermine American support for the war in Iraq. Zawahri refers to the "truce" bin Laden offered and warns Americans that they are wasting lives and treasure in Iraq and Afghanistan. Francona describes this and the bin Laden tape as part of a calculated al-Qaida psychological warfare effort.

Ironically, these al-Qaida tapes seem to be backfiring. Bush's support for the war on terror goes up every time one appears.

Despite bipartisan criticism of the administration's domestic eavesdropping program -- with even Republicans like Sens. Arlen Specter, Pa., and John McCain, Ariz., expressing doubts about its legality -- the White House has clearly decided that electronic spying is a political plus, not a minus. Framing the issue as a choice between protecting America against al-Qaida vs. personal privacy, the White House followed up Karl Rove's strong defense last week by bringing out one of its super spies today, Deputy National Intelligence Director General Mike Hayden.

This is really unusual: Mike Hayden's public appearances are usually limited to annual reports to the Senate Intelligence Committee, normally very dry affairs. This time, he went into the belly of the beast, the National Press Club, to criticize public disclosure of the secret program and contradict New York Times reporting that it is "data-mining" that sweeps up innocent communications. (full transcript of Hayden's remarks)

Hayden repeatedly said that the program was limited, legal and targeted only al-Qaida operatives -- or,  as he put it -- "people who want to kill Americans." Echoing Vice President Dick Cheney, Hayden claimed that if the program had been in place before 9/11, they could have caught the hijackers. He insisted that it was not a fishing expedition.

His other defense was "trust us," explaining that the people making the decisions about who gets spied upon are regular folks who shop and send their kids to school in Glen Burnie and Laurel, Md., near NSA headquarters. He said that they know the law, that the eavesdropping is limited and targeted "and the American people should not be worried."

Explaining why he didn't use the FISA (secret intelligence court) to get warrants first, he said he has two paths open to him. One is FISA, the other is presidential authority -- both legal. Why wouldn't he use FISA? Because, he said, one is better for operational reasons. The president's authorization allows him to track this kind of call more comprehensively and more efficiently. The trigger is quicker and a bit softer than it is for a FISA warrant, but the intrusion into privacy is also "limited" to international calls and only those they have a reasonable basis to believe involve al-Qaida or one of its affiliates.

Later, when asked about the fact that the law says if they go the FISA route, they can still eavesdrop for 72 hours before going to court, Hayden indicated that it is still cumbersome, because it requires  getting paperwork first from the attorney general saying that he will be able to justify it later to a  court.

He refused to be specific about whether they are going after individuals or groups -- citing  operational reasons. He also said that when they don't seek FISA warrants, only a "handful" of senior  executives in the NSA (equivalent to a senior military officer) make the decision.

As White House Correspondent Kelly O'Donnell posted in this blog last week, Hayden is the first act in a series of administration efforts this week to continue pushing back at its critics. The president will even go to NSA headquarters on Wednesday to make a more personal defense of the program.
 
Timing is important for the White House, and in this, it once again has had some unwitting help from al-Qaida. Last week, the terror group released another tape from Osama bin Laden -- just as it did only days before the 2004 election. Karl Rove (and Sen. John Kerry) know very well that any time George Bush is talking about 9/11 and Americans are worrying about Osama bin Laden, the president's poll numbers go up. And it becomes that much harder for critics, especially Democrats, to challenge the administration's assertion that there is a necessary trade-off between personal liberty and protection of the American homeland.

Twenty five years ago today, a new U.S. president was inaugurated and 52 American diplomats were released from Iran after 444 days of captivity. Their capture forever changed American foreign policy and helped defeat Jimmy Carter, who spent the final year of his presidency agonizing over failed efforts to win their release. So on Inauguration Day, Tehran spited Carter by waiting until just after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president to make sure the hostages were released on Reagan's watch.

For those who didn't live through it, it's hard to recreate the way the hostage situation shadowed America for those 444 days. It was the crisis that brought the perils of Islamic fundamentalism home to the U.S. as nothing had before. It was the impetus for a nightly broadcast on ABC called "America Held Hostage," which later become "Nightline." As a relatively new correspondent at NBC News, in the days before 24-hour cable or the Internet, part of my job was to stay up all night in the newsroom just in case there was some urgent word out of Iran about the hostages' fate that would warrant breaking into network programming. 

On that bright day a quarter century ago, I started the day covering Ronald Reagan's Inaugural, and ended it at Andrews Air Force Base at midnight as Jimmy Carter left for Plains, Ga., on his way to Germany to escort the hostages home.

Today, the State Department issued a brief statement commemorating the valor of the diplomats who'd been imprisoned in their own embassy, clearly using the anniversary as an occasion to remind the world of the administration's ongoing criticisms of Iran.

Spokesman Sean McCormick wrote: "Twenty-five years ago today, 52 brave American diplomats returned to freedom after 444 days of unjust captivity at the hands of Iranian hostage-takers. Following the violent takeover of the U.S. Embassy by Iranian militants, an outrageous violation of international law, our citizens suffered psychological torment and physical brutality. On behalf of the Secretary and all their State Department colleagues, I extend our sincere gratitude and admiration to these genuine American heroes."

One of the few benefits the returning hostages received, according to today's Washington Post, was a lifetime pass from Major League Baseball. According to the Post, for the embassy's press attache, Barry Rosen, that gold card became a way of re-entering his family's life. Rosen recalls that his small children were afraid of him.  He used his pass to take his kids to Shea Stadium and introduce them to baseball, as well as to their father.

It would be great if the tensions in foreign policy between Iran and America could be healed as easily. Twenty-five years later, a student from the hostage-taking generation is Iran's belligerent new president. The radical mullahs are still in charge, and insisting on their right to develop nuclear technology that can be used to make weapons. And the U.S. is no closer to figuring out a diplomatic or military strategy to better understand or contain Tehran.

What will happen next? European diplomats say the U.S. can now count on 20 votes at the International Atomic Energy Agency out of its 35-member board to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions. NBC News has learned that four members will vote no: Cuba, Venezuela, Belarus and Syria.  Russia and China and nine others will abstain. But once at the Security Council, the administration and its European allies will likely be forced to defer to Russia's wishes, and move slowly. The first step would be a "presidential statement" from the Security Council admonishing Iran, and giving it time to reconsider before the U.N. even takes up the question of sanctions.   

In the end, Iran has a lot of leverage over its adversaries because of its large oil and gas reserves.  And the administration believes if it can avoid directly punishing the Iranian people, they may eventually join the rest of the world and turn against their new leader.

That may be wishful thinking. Anyone who's been in Washington long enough to remember the hostage-taking - or read about it - knows that nationalism is as fervent a driving force to many Iranians as religious fundamentalism. This day more than 25 years ago was a rare moment of victory for the U.S. over Tehran, and it came on Iran's terms - too late for Jimmy Carter to savor it.

How do you prove you've been eavesdropped upon if the National Security Agency's surveillance program is so secret? That's the legal challenge for plaintiffs in the first lawsuits filed today against the NSA for its top secret program of domestic spying without court warrants. My producers and I have been interviewing some of the challengers today, as well as talking to government officials about their contention that the program is a necessary part of the war on terror. How do you balance security versus privacy? Or is that even the right question?

The Vice President said on January 4: "The activities conducted under this authorization have helped to detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks against the American people. As such, this program is critical to the national security of the United States." 

But today The New York Times reports exclusively that some FBI officials involved in the program - including FBI Director Robert Mueller - also had questions about its legality, and efficacy. The Times' sources are anonymous, but they question the administration's claim that eavesdropping on some of the specific people targeted by this program helped prevent an attack, such as the blowing up of the Brooklyn Bridge. According to the Times account, counterterror officials had other information independent of the surveillance program that led them to prevent those attacks. 

Whatever the legality - and the courts will be the final referee - clearly the administration feels it is on solid political ground. So far, polls show that most Americans questioned prefer to give up privacy for safety. Except it's a good bet most of them think the person being eavesdropped upon is "the other guy," not themselves.

We'll have more on this tonight on Nightly News.

At the same time, at the State Department, my colleague Elizabeth Leist is tracking new efforts by Condi Rice and Homeland Security Chief Chertoff to make it easier for foreign students who deserve to legitimately study in the U.S. to get visas, despite the post-9/11 restrictions. We're also following a number of other, ongoing foreign stories to see which might gel - including negotiations to get Iran to back off its nuclear research program (not working so far!) and the latest from Pakistan, in the wake of that controversial missile attack on suspected al-Qaida targets that killed civilian victims.

Iran's president, who previously denied that the Holocaust took place and threatened Israel with extinction, has now managed to do what George Bush and Condi Rice haven't been able to do:  unite the United States and Europe, including Russia, on a joint diplomatic track - and get the U.S. to praise the United Nations.  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - the man with the unpronounceable name who fronts for the mullahs who run Iran - have defied the world by resuming nuclear research that could be used to develop a bomb.

I was at a State Department briefing today and asked the Secretary of State why Iran has chosen isolation. She, like most analysts, hasn't figured out Iran's motive.  But most experts agree that Iran appears to have a deeply seated need to show it can be a nuclear power. 

Iran protests that it just wants to enrich uranium in order to produce nuclear energy. It can't explain why one of the world's great oil producing nations needs nuclear power plants and why it is refusing Russia's offer to do Iran's enriching on Russian soil, under international safeguards. 

As world oil prices spike today on the likelihood of a confrontation that could lead to economic sanctions and even an oil embargo on Iran, skeptics wonder whether there are any teeth in the likely international response.  The next step is an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN organization headed by Nobel laureate Mohammed el Baradei.  A sharp critic of the U.S. on Iraq, el Baradei now becomes a central player in validating America's diplomatic approach to Iran. 

Then the stalemate will go to the UN Security Council, where the U.S. needs to avoid a veto by China - deeply dependent on Iranian oil exports. China's response will largely depend on how Russia, a longtime ally of Iran, decides to vote. 

The greatest irony is that U.S. effort at the UN will be led by Ambassador John Bolton - a hawk who once told NBC News the Bush administration would "never let the mullahs get the bomb." (In fact, most intelligence projects that Iran is still at least five years away from solving all the technical issues it needs to answer before it could produce a weapon.)  Bolton and other administration hardliners used to talk about military options.  But Rice and intelligence officials have made it clear that there are no military options - not by the U.S., or Israel.  So the administration is now relying on the United Nations - the very organization it used to disdain. 

During Rice's briefing, our foreign news producer at Nightly News in New York Blackberried that the program wanted me to start preparing a story for tonight on Iran's unpredictable leader, the likely consequences in the oil markets, and the diplomatic options.  We're interviewing nuclear experts, oil analysts and others as we dig deeper into the larger consequences of Iran's decision to choose confrontation over diplomacy and will have that story for you tonight, on Nightly News.