The Iranian threat

David Miliband, one of the few current cabinet ministers not to have demonstrated his unfitness to hold office, has made some wise remarks in respect of the recent U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear programme:

There are three key elements to a nuclear weapon - the fissile material, the missile itself and the process of weaponising the fissile material for the missile. The US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear programme published this week suggests that Iran has put work on the last of these elements on hold. If so, good. But Iran is still pursuing the other two elements, in particular an enrichment programme that has no apparent civilian application, but which could produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon, despite demands to stop from the United Nations Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

This is the key point that many of the wishful-thinkers have failed to grasp. Even if it is true that Iran stopped actively seeking to produce a nuclear weapon in 2003, they have evidently not stopped trying to obtain the technological ability to do so at a time of their own choosing. As there is no reason to suppose that the President of Iran will call a press conference to announce a change in policy in this matter, we may never find out whether Iran has decided to build a bomb before it detonates somewhere.

Accordingly the only sane response for western policy towards Iran in the current circumstances is more of the same. Iran does seem to be susceptible to diplomatic pressure: 2003 is also the date of the invasion of Iraq. Iran, like Libya, may have made a sensible calculation of where her self-interest lay in the wake of U.S. and British action against Saddam. There may therefore never be a need for military action against Iran to disable its nuclear programme - but it would nevertheless be lunacy to declare that military action against Iran is out of the question.

This is the message which should be sent out loud and clear in the wake of the NIE report. It is gratifying that this is the message which the British government is managing to send, in spite of its woeful inadequacies on almost every other front.

[Thanks to Oliver Kamm]