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Let's admit it, Iran has the upper hand(Scotland on Sunday Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)IRAN's leaders may be crazed and dangerous fanatics, but they are not stupid. This is the crucial flaw in Tony Blair's plan to refer the country to the United Nations Security Council: Tehran knows only too well that it has nothing to fear. The Western world may be suitably impressed to learn that the Prime Minister is pushing for the 35 member states of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to wash its hands of Iran and pass the problem to the UN's war council. But as the debacle over Iraq and genocide in Sudan showed us, the UN long ago lost its ability to address such problems. We must now fully expect that, before too long, a regime dedicated to wiping Israel "off the map" will acquire nuclear weapons. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rightly acts like a man who has the upper hand. He is president (thought not ruler) of a theocracy which has the world's second largest supply of gas in the middle of an energy crisis. This is a pretty strong starting point. He and his officials hurled derision at Blair and other Western leaders as they met last week to decide what to do about Iran's decision to break the seals off its nuclear research laboratory in defiance of the IAEA strictures. Its claim to only want civil nuclear energy is risible. Russia has offered to process uranium for Iran and send it off, below the strength needed for a bomb. The European Union has made similar noises - but Tehran wants something more. It has seen the prestige and clout which Pakistan acquired when it developed its nuclear bomb. Such countries tend not to be threatened as much, and will never be invaded. This is the status Iran wants, and it will eventually get there. The severity of the threat lies in the nature of the regime. Iran is now the world's most active state paymaster of terrorism. Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are all its offspring - so, on a low level, it is already at war. It is busy developing an intercontinental missile, the Saharb 3, with an 800-mile range that could hit Israel. Anti-semitism is the calling card of Ahmadinejad's government: he regularly denies the Holocaust and calls for Israel to move to Europe. Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obvious since it re-launched its uranium conversion programme last August. The EU thought it could sweet-talk Tehran out of them - Iran took them for the suckers they are and carried on regardless. Now, by the IAEA's own estimation, Iran is "a few months" away from nuclear explosives if it converts enough uranium and carries out the enrichment procedures started when it tore the seals of the plant. So who will stop it? The United States is quickly acquiring the 'Vietnam Syndrome' - the decision never to venture abroad again, after being so stung by the disaster which has become the occupation of Iraq. It has no stomach for a new battle: and Tehran knows it. Russia doesn't like the idea of any neighbour acquiring nuclear weapons, but it's happy to sell surface-to-air missiles to Iran. Vladimir Putin has been busy building his own Topol-M nuclear missiles designed to penetrate US air defences. Britain has decided to deal with Iran through the European Union. The idea of the new EU defence force invading Iran to stop its nuclear development would be enough to convulse Tehran into laughter. In Washington, there is a power vacuum. In London, a sign saying "please call Brussels for all inquiries relating to Iran." Moscow is in the business of arming, rather than disarming and Beijing badly needs Iran's oil and gas reserves. Add all this together, and we are left with a stark conclusion: there is nobody left to tame Iran. The higher oil and gas prices soar, the greater its geopolitical power will be - and the better it will be able to square up to nuclear-armed Israel. This brings us to the crux of the problem. In Britain, we shake our heads at Ahmadinejad's threats to Israel - but have only a dim grasp of the reheated Nazi propaganda being poured through Iran's media, just as it was in Weimar Germany. Jaam-e Jam Iranian television last month was showing two analysts claiming that it had long been proved that "many English children were killed by Jewish rabbis" and that Jews in Paris slaughtered French children before their Passover. To Britain, this may sound like the ravings of lunatics. The same could have been said of the Nazis, who started off as backstreet thugs and were even written off by the bien-pensants of Munich and Berlin as a rival gang to contain the communists. The difference is when such people get into power, and are not seen as lunatics by their own people. Add to this an official policy of Holocaust denial and presidential calls to wipe Israel off the map - and then wonder how all this looks from Jerusalem. Israel is nuclear-armed, without a Prime Minister and very much aware that in Iran it is facing the single biggest threat since the inception of the state. It too can play mental chess - and see the UN process, if it starts, taking years to complete. Last month it ordered two nuclear submarines from Germany in order to let Tehran know it has second-strike capacity should Tel Aviv be hit. In its short history, Israel has not been a country that has waited for emerging threats to grow. What is required here is faith in the UN. The threat of war is the best guarantor of peace: it is the nuclear deterrent that kept Europe peaceful throughout the Cold War and it is the threat of international reprisal that keeps rogue states at bay today. As the world environment grows more tense than it has been since the end of the Cold War, the UN shows itself hopelessly inefficient at tackling such threats. Only yesterday Jan Pronk, head of the UN mission in Darfur, admitted "our peace strategy so far has failed". Its response in Sudan has been to impose an arms embargo that all sides have violated, referred the crisis to the International Criminal Court, which moves at glacial pace, and impose a travel ban on belligerents, which China opposed. The UN is losing a battle against murderers on camelback and horseback: no wonder Tehran is so unconcerned about Blair's threats. And if the 'great powers' cannot deal with today's Iran they stand no chance of dealing with a nuclear one. If there is no one to tame Iran, then there is no one to calm Israel. These are the stark facts of the Middle East at present - and Blair is more powerless to change them than he would dare admit. |