A monster of our own making

Cyrus the Great, the ancient Persian king who allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and wrote the first charter of human rights, must be spinning in his grave. Once the world’s most advanced civilisation, Iran is yet again descending into barbarism under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the rabid fanatic who took power in a rigged election last year.

A former member of the elite Revolutionary Guards, Ahmadinejad is determined to return Iran to what he believes to be its rightful place at the vanguard of the global Islamic revolution. At first the world chose to turn a blind eye to his inflammatory rhetoric; but even the West’s most deluded diplomats now take him seriously when he calls for Israel to be wiped off the map, especially given that his government is also busily developing a nuclear programme. Ahmadinejad’s rise was always going to be bad news for Iran’s long-suffering population; but it is now looking equally catastrophic for the rest of the Middle East, which is suddenly waking up to the prospect of a newly dominant Iran.

For it is now becoming all too clear that the Islamic Republic has emerged as the surprise victor from the invasion of Iraq and is making the most of the power vacuum in the Gulf to establish itself as the new regional superpower. The demise of Iraq, together with Iran’s dash to nuclear capability — another development that the West has disastrously mishandled — has meant that the balance of power is changing radically in the Middle East, with Iran firmly in the ascendancy. Control of Iraq, together with the acquisition of the weapons of mass destruction that all serious experts believe to be the aim of its nuclear programme, would make Iran the Gulf’s uncontested hegemon as well as the pre-eminent force within political Islam, a stunning double victory now within Tehran’s reach.