TEHRAN, AGAIN?

So the Iranian president denies the Holocaust, so what? He is first and foremost a politician, then a diplomat, if at all, next. He is under no obligation to be nice about the Holocaust. Of course, he is being tactless and crude, but does this amount to the level of belligerence? I don't see it that way.

When Dubya decided that Saddam had to go, and that he would bring Iraq to its knees to achieve his aims, the world agreed largely with him. Thay had no qualms in allowing a nation to invade another on the flimsiest of suspicions that even American prosecutors would have thrown out of court, no matter how badly the Judges were stacked against justice.

What everyone fears is that Tehran will one day have a nuke to lob at Israel. But, history shows us that only one nation has ever nuked another. India and Pakistan, implacable foes since the mid-fifties, now possess nuclear weapons, yet they aren't about to go to war with each other. I don't see how Iran could possibly go to war with another nuclear power. It would be suicide.

While Tehran has supported suicide bombing missions to Israel, there is no evidence to show that some of the bombers were Iranian. A nuclear war would be suicidal for them. What really gets the West's goat is that Iran learnt from Iraq's mistakes. Just when Iraq's nuclear facilities were about to go operational, Israel blew them to kingdom come. Unfortunately, they had located them in one area, easy to find and consequently, easy to bomb. Iran, cheekily, has dispersed all its facilities precisely because they will be harder to find and bomb.

Such tactical dispersion removes any disadvantages Iran might have in terms of conventional military defenses. It is this lack of tactical advantage for Iran's potential foes that makes them mad. Iran is refusing to play by their rules. They are not placing themselves in harm's way and the Americans are not happy about it. Further, Iran being such a difficult nation to penetrate, what with its peculiar popularity for a clearly demented political system, could it be that the West and Israel are finding it difficult to locate all of Iran's nuclear facilities. This would explain why there is so much talk of a 'democratic wave' sweeping the Middle East as a result of any potential success in Iraq. But such hope is mere speculation. Iran so far has not shown the same desire as the other regimes in the region for Western-style democracy or systems. That is ultimately the paradox of Iran. And the reason why all talk of an imminent invasion is just that-TALK.