It had been over a week since President Temple had his surreal meeting with the Cabal, and they were one of the furthest things on his mind. Besides the normal, myriad of issues a US president had to deal with, there was progress on the Iranian front! If things worked out with the next batch of meetings he had scheduled with Chinese Premier An Sui and Russian President Aleksey Markov, the Iranian-American War (as some in the media titled it) would be the shortest modern-day war since the Falklands War of 1982!
Given the United Nations Security Council required a unanimous vote to go to any war, the Temple Administration's push for a UN-led war failed earlier in the year since both China and Russia vetoed the campaign for war in Iran. President Temple was, however, able to muster up the votes in the US Congress and the Senate for the war against Iran. In essence, the government of Iran was caught, via American intelligence, making nuclear weapons. And given that Iran was one of the 190 signatory states of the Non-Proliferation Treaty of nukes, it was a breach of the UN treaty. Again, since the United Nations was not party to the war between the US and Iran, President Temple thought he could use the political route to get out of the war since Russia and China were Iran's allies...lives, literally, hung in the balance with such meetings!