World

Alan Dershowitz says that the pre-emptive assault on Iraq has given a bad name to a good idea — and will leave Iran the most dangerous nation in the world Face it. Iran will get the bomb. It has already test-fired rockets capable of targeting the entire Middle East and much of southern Europe. And it claims to have 40,000 suicide volunteers eager to deploy terrorism — even nuclear terrorism — against its enemies. With a nuclear capacity, the Islamic Republic of Iran will instantly achieve the status of superpower to which Iraq aspired. Nothing will deter Iran. Sanctions are paper protests to an oil-rich nation. Diplomacy has already failed

Iran’s leaders may be crazed and dangerous fanatics, but they are not stupid. That is why President Bush is right to show the Iranian regime that he is serious about containing its undisputed ambition to go nuclear in flagrant defiance of the international community. Nobody in their right mind — including President Bush — wants to go to war, let alone launch nuclear missile strikes, as some overexcited headlines in the American and British media have suggested over the past few days. But the White House, as well as Downing Street, would be delinquent if they were not busily reviewing all possible contingencies to deal with Iran. That senior generals

The performance in the Israeli elections of Kadima, the new centrist party founded by Ariel Sharon, is almost as remarkable as the survival of the state of Israel itself in the 58 years since its foundation. True, Kadima did not secure the clear mandate for which the acting Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, had hoped. Turnout was also disappointingly low. But Kadima, the breakaway group formed after Mr Sharon dramatically left Likud last year, has emerged as easily the biggest single party and will lead a coalition to form the next government. As The Spectator goes to press, the precise complexion of that coalition is impossible to judge. Mr Olmert

It was John Major who came a cropper while trying to restore the nation’s moral values: his ‘back to basics’ campaign was mocked to death before it had really got started. Yet Mr Major’s attempt to influence the nation’s morals was nothing compared with that of Tony Blair, who has overseen a Sexual Offences Act, a law against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, the introduction of civil partnerships for gay couples, and a gambling Bill. Moreover, Mr Blair seems to have got away with it. It is not entirely obvious why we should be happy to allow a preachy Tony Blair to tell us what is right and

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

What a human catastrophe is the doctrine of human rights! Not only does it give officialdom an excuse to insinuate itself into the very fabric of our lives, but it has a profoundly corrupting effect upon youth, who have been indoctrinated into believing that until such rights were granted (or is it discovered?) there was no freedom. Worse still, it persuades each young person that he is uniquely precious, which is to say more precious than anyone else; and that, moreover, the world is a giant conspiracy to deprive him of his rightful entitlements. Once someone is convinced of his rights, it becomes impossible to reason with him; and thus

Jack Straw says that military action against Iran is ‘inconceivable’. The President of Iran says he wants to wipe Israel ‘off the map’. Why doesn’t an interviewer ask the Foreign Secretary whether, if Iran tried to do this, military action would still be inconceivable? If he says yes (and if that is the policy of the West), then Iran will know that it can go ahead. There has been no more touching story in recent days than the complaint of Alexander Chancellor, the great former editor of The Spectator, that he has been dropped from Today’s Birthdays in the Guardian. Alexander, who is 66 this month, protested, and was told

The Prime Minister is right about one thing: ‘The liberty of the law-abiding citizen to be safe from fear comes first.’ It is indeed the first duty of the state to ensure that its citizens can live peacefully and go about their lawful business without fearing that they will be attacked or have their property stolen or destroyed by others. Mr Blair is also right to note that ‘the criminal justice system [is] failing people’, because it is failing to ensure that they can live without that fear. His intention to try to do something to improve that situation is laudable. Unfortunately, his latest set of proposals — which go

I don’t believe that I can be alone in having spent a Russian or Ukrainian winter with the windows of my room wide open. Many buildings in that part of the world are dreadfully overheated, for the simple reason that energy is so cheap. Soon, however, Ukrainians will have to learn to close their windows. Until this week, the Russian gas company Gazprom charged Ukrainian consumers $50 for every 1,000 cubic metres of gas they used. On Sunday Gazprom demanded that they pay $230. The Ukrainians’ first response was to refuse, and the Russians turned off the gas. The choice, it seemed, was expensive fuel, or no fuel at all.

31 December 2055 The deaths of the Earl of Sedgefield, aged 102, and Mr Gordon Brown, 104, brings to a sad conclusion the most remarkable and prolonged feud in British political history. It would, of course, be improper to speculate on the precise circumstances before the inquest, but police have confirmed that at around 2.30 p.m. on Christmas Day two elderly men were involved in a fracas at the Golden Handshake Nursing Home, the opulent country house in Surrey favoured as the final home of many wealthy civil servants and local government employees. Both men later succumbed to their injuries. According to nursing staff, the two were seen squabbling over

Singapore No one outside Singapore’s steel-trap judiciary knows for sure whether Darshan Singh hanged Nguyen Tuong Van, of Melbourne, in Changi on Friday 2 December. A week earlier, Darshan said he’d been sacked as chief hangman after a series of embarrassingly gruesome articles had appeared about him in the Australian press. But his masters insist he wasn’t sacked. The confusion was not what you’d expect in Singapore, a place that is in most things obsessively efficient. But we do know that 72-year-old Darshan has seen off about 850 criminals in his 40 years as hangman. He is something of a world champion at this particular discipline. One detail about Darshan

Proud without prejudice I am extremely glad to know that The Spectator watches BBC News 24 (5 November). However, I fear that your leader writer must have momentarily allowed his attention to wander as he watched our coverage of the resignation of Mr David Blunkett. At no time was I ‘dismissive’ about the significance of the event. At no time did I say that the Prime Minister would ‘emerge stronger’ from the resignation. Such a suggestion, as your leader writer asserted with his usual verve, would indeed be preposterous. I merely speculated that Tony Blair might use Mr Blunkett’s departure as an opportunity to have a wider reshuffle. This speculation

Jonathan Mirsky says that the state visit to Britain of China’s President is no cause for celebration When China’s President Hu Jintao sits next to the Queen at her state banquet for him on 8 November he will be a contented man. In the words of the Royal Academy of Arts, ‘China Turns London Red’. Somerset House, the London Eye and other buildings will be illuminated in the Communist party’s preferred colour to mark, says the Academy, ‘an extraordinary moment in Britain’s continuing relationship with China’. To deepen this relationship, Mac Cosmetics is launching ‘Ruby Woo’, a new range of lipsticks, and Shanghai Tang, already a byword in sucking up