If you think the price of oil is high today, just wait until Iran develops its own nuclear weapons and U.S. troops are forced out of Iraq.

Such a scenario could send already record U.S. gasoline prices even higher, should President Bush's troop surge initiative fail, according to John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Bolton, who spoke Tuesday at Zions Bank's International Trade and Business Conference in downtown Salt Lake City, offered a bleak assessment of international threats facing the United States.

Those risks include a growing sense of nationalism, anti-Americanism, a push against free markets and rising energy prices.

"If the United States precipitously leaves Iraq, the other governments of the Persian Gulf, who are very practical people, will look around and say, 'Well the United States is gone. We're not going anywhere. There's Iran.' And they will make a deal to keep themselves in power."

In the Western Hemisphere, Bolton singled out Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as one of the more immediate problems for the United States.

"We know that he has poured what are disproportionately large amounts of money into election campaigns in a number of Latin American countries," Bolton said. "He has done other things which are even more troubling.

"Last year Venezuela purchased something like 100,000 AK-47 rifles from Russia. We don't know what he is going to do with those weapons. Some of the weapons are being distributed to Chavez's own supporters to form militias. There's obviously the risk that those weapons could be used elsewhere in Latin America."

In Asia, Bolton expressed worry over a Chinese ballistic missile that recently shot down one of China's own weather satellites.

"This demonstrates that they've got the capability for what's called anti-satellite warfare," Bolton said. "This is considerably more than passing interest to the United States and to Taiwan. If China can take our eyes out, in effect, it means they can blind us to pending military activity and certainly frustrate our efforts in creating for ourselves a national missile defense system."

Bolton said the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein was "overwhelmingly" the right thing to do.

"What we have to do today is focus on preventing Iraq or any part of it from being used as a base for international terrorism," Bolton said. "I don't think there is any alternative, but the president's surge option. ... If the surge fails, there's no support for a plan B. That's the political reality."

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