[continued from previous message] 
  
 nudging $100 a barrel, the Iranians may curb oil exports, or at least 
 redirect them away from the West. 
  
 While Britain, France and Germany import little Iranian oil, we would, 
 nevertheless, be affected by higher global oil prices. Other countries 
 such as Japan and Italy - which respectively import 12 and nine per 
 cent of their oil from Iran - and would be even harder hit. 
  
 Moreover, these enhanced sanctions depend on the Chinese and Russians 
 playing ball at the UN Security Council. Both countries will, of 
 course, want to cause the over-mighty Americans maximum embarrassment. 
 The hope is that Putin's own concerns about Iran's capacity to cause 
 mischief among the Muslim populations of southern Russia and its 
 neighbouring countries might encourage him to put political power-play 
 aside for the sake of global stability. 
  
 Sanctions may be slow and imperfect, but the existing ones against Iran 
 are already having a political effect. 
  
 Opposition to Iran's President Ahmadinejad has spread beyond the 
 students in Iran to conservative "traitors" who feel he is taking their 
 country over a precipice, or are embarrassed by his pronouncements 
 about wiping out Israel. 
  
 Such "traitors" are influential individuals and include two former 
 presidents as well as the country's top nuclear negotiator, who this 
 week resigned abruptly over policy differences with the President. 
  
 If these rifts are the result of the pressure the West has peacefully 
 applied, then it seems insane to further inflame Iranian - and Syrian - 
 hackles through a war that will be launched because of suspicions about 
 Iran's nuclear intentions rather than certainties, and which will hence 
 be illegal in the eyes of the UN. 
  
 Besides, yesterday's International Atomic Energy Agency report 
 indicates that Iran has begun to play ball with the inspectors. 
  
 Unpopular as it might sound, it is very difficult to argue that Iran 
 should be denied nuclear power for use in a civic capacity. They want 
 it to underline Persian cultural superiority over the neighbouring 
 Arabs and to sell more of their lucrative oil by generating electricity 
 from atomic power. 
  
 Both Russia, and now the Gulf states, have already offered to supply 
 Iran with enriched uranium, from plants based in either Russia or 
 Switzerland. 
  
 Of course, I acknowledge that some elements of Iran's current regime 
 undoubtedly also want a bomb, although they would need 200 of them to 
 match Israel's nuclear capacity. 
  
 But, if it was possible to hammer out a deal with North Korea's Kim 
 Jong-Il to abandon his quest for a bomb, it must be possible to find a 
 diplomatic solution that enables Iran to generate electricity from 
 nuclear power while abandoning a project that will immediately trigger 
 an Arab nuclear arms race from Cairo to Riyadh. 
  
 For other countries in the Middle East are not going to tolerate much 
 longer the major unintended result of the Iraq war, namely Iran's 
 emergence as the regional big power. 
  
 The possibility that Iran might be reintegrated into the international 
 community in return for abandoning its suicidal quest for nuclear 
 weapons is exactly the strategy Gordon Brown should explore before the 
 West ends up plunging yet another part of the Muslim world into the 
 chaos from which terrorism flows. 
  
 Every option needs to be exhausted before anyone contemplates a war 
 whose effects will make the aftermath of the Iraq war look like a walk 
 in the park. 
  
 [Michael Burleigh's Blood And Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism 
 will be published in February.] 
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