History repeating

Jack Straw claims there is no good reason for Iran to restart its research if it truly only wants a nuclear program for peaceful means.

Well, that's what they call blowback, Jack.

While it is true that the Iranians have been trying to develop a nuclear weapons capability at least since the Iran-Iraq war, they have certainly displayed renewed determination post-Iraq.

Critics of the Administration say Bush's hard public line against the so-called "Axis of Evil," combined with the threatened war with Iraq, have acted as a spur to both Iran and North Korea to accelerate their nuclear programs.

Said Time back in 2003.

"If those countries didn't have much incentive or motivation before, they certainly did after the Axis of Evil statement," says one western diplomat familiar with the Iranian and North Korean programs.

So far, so what?

The accession of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the Iranian presidency, that's what.

The new Iranian president might well be "very niave politically but out of his depth", "sabre rattling", "playing to the home crowd" with his talk of wiping out Israel, sharing nuclear technology with other Muslim states etc etc, as most commentators and politicians say. But what if he is not?

It is the habit of rational people (and even politicians) to presume the people they are dealing with are also rational. But history suggests otherwise. Recent history has had a habit of producing brilliant nutters, from Hitler to Mugabe, via Pol Pot. And each of these leaders have at one point or another been treated as rational men, who can be negotiated with, will seek a reasonable solution and if not, will be deposed in a palace coup by forces of reason. Certainly the epithets attached to Ahmadinejad, would have accompanied Hitler through the early 30s. But time and again he proved his critics wrong.

Indeed, the path Ahmadinejad is treading all too rapidly is certainly one that would come as no surprise to Adolf himself, from his anti-semitic outbursts to the current breaking of the UN seals on the nuclear research facilities - a kind of symbolic remilitarisation of the Rhineland if you like.

I opposed the Iraq war, not because I'm some pinko pacifist. I just considered it folly. But unless the UN acts quickly and decisively I would support military action against Iran, with all its horrendous consequences. I don't believe Ahmadinejad is a reasonable man. I strongly suspect he will not only develop nuclear weapons but he will be prepared to use them, or at least pass them to agencies that will do so. It is not as if Iran has blanched from using terrorism against Western interests before.

For all the likely blowback - and I suspect it would make Iraq look like a tea party - we have to act now. Better this than have our grandchildren survey the ashes of our great cities and think of Bush and Blair not as 21st Century Churchills, but half-baked Chamberlains.