Iran is dragging us into a new Cold War

THE acronym for Mutually Assured Destruction - the nuclear deterrent policy which won the Cold War - said it all. It is hard, now, to imagine that the palpable prospect of a nuclear strike hung over Britain for so many decades.

A generation of Europeans has now grown up thinking of war as something which happens somewhere else. Historically, this is a luxury and one which we had best savour today, because it may be close to ending.

It is all but inevitable that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons, that no one dare invade and that the only tool the West will have to deter their use is the credible threat of counterattack. We are not heading for another Iraq, but towards a new Cold War.

For a situation with such profound implications for global security, there is appallingly little sense being talked about Iran. Attention is focused on the sideshow laid on by the United Nations and the naïve idea that it will help matters.

On Friday, the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), sternly declared that Iran is defying international law and trying to become a nuclear power. Tehran immediately told the UN to go to hell.

The UN, offended, will meet next week to discuss what to do next. As if to give them food for thought, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, declared that Iran does "not give a damn about such resolutions". He is emboldened, not intimidated.

There are several more acts to play in this tedious drama. The UN Security Council will ask Iran to stop enriching uranium, but give no ultimatum. In the autumn, it will discuss economic sanctions. Its members will fall out, and nothing will happen.

Media coverage of the UN carries the quaint impression that what it says counts. The world learnt otherwise with the slaughter in Srebrenica, genocide in Rwanda and now in Darfur. The UN does good humanitarian work, but is militarily useless.

Nor should we take seriously claims that America will invade. The Pentagon is doubtless drawing up plans involving regime change, but it pays teams of people to draw up contingency plans for a whole range of countries.

Having failed to pacify Iraq, America knows not to expect more success in occupying a country four times the size with three times the population and mountainous terrain that could have been designed by a team of insurgents.

Iraq was invaded in the belief that its people would welcome liberation from a murderous dictator, but there is no such naivety about Iranians. When Saddam Hussein invaded in 1980, he found that even Iranians who hate the ayatollahs are patriots in wartime.

The threat of force is a useful diplomatic tool but unless Iran makes a direct attack on America it will be left to develop its nukes. The West can precision-bomb a few factories from time to time, but Iran is ready for this and has underground facilities.

In recent years India, Pakistan, Israel and South Africa have come on the nuclear scene, either announcing their arrival with a test bomb or finishing their technology in secret. None of them upset the prospects for global peace too badly, but Iran is different.

We are dealing with an expansionist country, already sending explosive devices over the Iraqi border to kill British troops. Its president has pledged to wipe Israel "off the map" and is developing missiles which could reach Tel Aviv.

The only hope of containing a nuclear-armed Iran is to convey the certainty of retaliation. It is pointless owning nuclear weapons if you cannot convince enemies that you would use them, and increasingly this is the task today.

This is partly why it is important for President Bush to keep Donald Rumsfeld as his defence secretary. Iran may conclude the West has no stomach for a fight, but such confidence disappears with one look at Rummy's maniacal grin.

Because Rumsfeld is considered crazy enough to do anything, he has the deterrence effect of 100 nuclear warheads. And we are fast heading back into the territory where intimidation is a vital tool in foreign affairs.

There are early signs of Iran forming a bloc with other undemocratic and often oil-rich states with good reason to fear the idea of Pax Americana.

As the second-largest oil producer in Opec, Iran has plenty of negotiating power. Oil-thirsty China has already signed long-term supply deals and is protecting Iran in the UN Security Council, where it holds a veto.

Russia, fast sliding back to its authoritarian past, is already selling arms to Iran and spending vast amounts of money on a new generation of nuclear missiles of greater reach and accuracy than anything produced by the Soviet Union.

Energy security, which Russia has declared the theme of its G8 presidency this year, is fast becoming synonymous with national security. Today's pipeline deals may well shape tomorrow's alliances.

Before this decade is out, Tony Blair or his successor will have to decide whether to renew Britain's nuclear deterrent. Everything that is happening in Iran suggests that the world is, alas, not yet safe enough to drop our nuclear shield.

The first Cold War ended without firing a missile because neither side was mad enough to test the resolve of the other. But the Soviets were rational in a way in which the ayatollahs are not, and took the West far more seriously.

It is no longer a question of whether Iran will get nuclear weapons but of when - and what the best way is of containing it when this happens.

Any country with reason to fear Islamic fundamentalism, like Russia, should be reminded that Iran is the main sponsor of such terrorism. Anyone who fears the world recession that a new Cold War could bring, like China, should be drummed in to help.

Dealing with Iran is too important to leave to the UN, and Washington is exactly right to say it will start with its own sanctions by banning arms sales - although Iran is unlikely to rely on secret weapon orders shipped in from Pennsylvania.

It is time to pick new alliances, to isolate Iran and make abundantly clear that it will face the gravest consequences if it attempts to weaponise its uranium. And this does, indeed, mean the threat of strategic nuclear strikes.

The stories that America is "planning" such attacks are a throwback to the 1960s when countries said to each other: if I wanted to, I could destroy you. We are fast returning to the world of threats, counter-threats and visions of apocalypse.

There is no prospect of British troops keeping peace in Tehran under American command. By far the greater danger is a return to nuclear brinkmanship - where world peace depends on reasoning with the most fanatical regime on earth.