Iran and nuclear research.

Does the West realize how pathetic it sounds, both at home and abroad, in its reactions to Iran's nuclear programme?

Of course any proliferation of nuclear weapons is deplorable, and no one can be happy if yet another country, especially Iran under its present regime, goes in for it. But the protests and hand-wringing about it doing so, the threats of referring the matter to the Security Council and there urging all sorts of economic measures to bring Iran to heel are feeble, unrealistic and counter-productive, as well as resting on dodgy moral grounds.

They are unrealistic because, when push comes to shove, the Security Council is unlikely to do anything about it, if only because China, dependent as its expanding economy is on Iranian oil, would veto any measures against Iran.

They would be counter-productive because, as Ahmadinejad has said, the West needs Iran more than Iran needs the West. The West's energy crisis is quite bad enough as it is, what with Chinese demands for oil already pushing up its price and the Iraqi oil fields crippled by sabotage.

As for military intervention against Iran, that is simply not feasible, especially not after the experience in Iraq. Perhaps the Americans (or the Israelis) are toying with the idea of a pre-emptive air strike on Iran's nuclear facilities; but at the very least that would lead to an oil crisis which would make the 1973 one look like a storm in a teacup, and at the worst it could set the entire Middle East aflame.

So even if it were morally defensible to proceed against Iran, purely practical considerations argue against it.

But the moral grounds for lecturing the Iranians are also pretty dodgy:

1. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty came into force 36 years ago. Under the Treaty only the five Permanent Members of the Security Council had the right to produce and keep nuclear weapons. At that time these were also the only five countries which had the capacity to produce such weapons. Doubtlessly a number of the 189 signatories signed the treaty of their own free will because it would make for a safer world; but others did so surely under the pressure of the Big Five. The possession of nuclear weapons would enable small countries, which otherwise could not stand up to Great Power pressure, to do so; so from a Machiavellian point of view, it is perfectly understandable that the Big Five did not want their dominance challenged by smaller countries. But there was always something morally unsavoury about the Big Five safeguarding their right to produce nuclear weapons but denyig it to other countries. It is true that Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; but Article X gives signatories the right to withdraw from it.

2. Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea have all got away with producing nuclear weapons, in the latter three cases after the ritual splutterings from the West. And whereas those countries have made no bones about wanting to become nuclear military powers, the Iranian government has denied that its programme is designed to produce weapons. It is of course perfectly understandable that nobody believes that.

If we could stop the Iranians by pressure, there would be strong Machiavellian arguments for exerting it. But I don't think we can. I don't think the Iranians will be browbeaten. Neighbouring Middle Eastern governments will doubtlessly be nervous about a nuclear-armed Iran, but public opinion in those countries will merely be further inflamed against Western policy than it already is.

We are in a hole - and the least we can do is not to dig ourselves deeper into it.

Thoughts on the Hamas Victory.

1. The actual elections seem to have been fair. The electoral system adopted, half the seats being first-past the-post constituency seats and half a proportional representation list, with a certain number of candidates on the list having to be women, was as good a system as could be devised, and the only genuinely democratic voting system in the Arab Middle East.

2. There are a number of ironies in the result:

The Western world had been calling for democracy in the Middle East. Some people have long foretold that the result would be a radicalization of the political scene, governments which will be more active in their hostility to Israel and to the West, and very likely more Islamicist. The result in Palestine will be a huge encouragement for and strengthening of the democratic but also Islamicist opposition in the less democratic countries in the Arab world.

It appears that the main reason for the Hamas victory was that it was perceived as less corrupt than Fatah. It is doubtful whether many of the voters, while firm in their resistance to the Israeli occupation, acutally want the violence to escalate still further, with all the additional suffering that would mean for the Palestinians. One also wonders whether more than a minority of Hamas voters would want the Sharia to be the basis of a Palestinian legal system, with all that is likely to mean for women, for secularists, and for freedom of expression.

3. Possible scenarios for the future:

a) Although at present the rhetoric on both the Hamas and the Israeli side is that they will not talk to each other, this will have to be abandoned by both sides sooner rather than later: they are so dependent on each other (though unequally so) that both will be compelled to do that. Though for the Quartet the compulsion is not so great or so immediate, it is even more certain that the Quartet, too, will talk to Hamas, whether or not Hamas abandons violence.

b) That is not to say that the Peace Process would be advanced when such contact is established. Even the minimum demands of the two sides are totally irreconcilable, and no resolution is in sight for the foreseeable future. Any unoffical truce that may be established will therefore be extremely unstable.

c) If the West thinks that it has some hold on Hamas because of the financial aid it has been giving to the Palestinians, it is fooling itself. The Iranians certainly and Saudi circles probably will be willing to pour money, arms, and fighters into Hamas Palestine. They had never been keen on the secular-minded PLO.

d) This could mean that in a very short time a Hamas-led Palestine will much more of a military threat to Israel than the PLO ever was. The Wall will not keep out the kind of weaponry which will soon be available to the Palestinians.

e) It is possible that in there will be a civil war among the Palestinians. The armed men and the security apparatus of Fatah may not readily agree to put themselves under Hamas control or to dissolve themselves. They have much to lose and perhaps much to fear. And there are some pretty thuggish and out-of-control elements in Fatah.

f) There may also be splits in Hamas between the pragmatists and the zealots. Hamas already talks with two voices, and it remains to be seen whether that reflects the reality or is a tactical manoeuvre. And in any case there is always Islamic Jihad in the wings: pragmatists in Hamas will not want to lose the zealots in their ranks to Islamic Jihad.

g) The effect on the forthcoming Israeli elections is uncertain. The Israeli public is in a most unenviable situation: the great majority of Israelis know that they will have to make concessions, if perhaps unilateral ones. That accounts for the current strong position of Kadimah in the polls. On the other hand, they also know that no concessions that they think they can realistically make will be enough to bring peace with the Palestinians any nearer, and they must therefore feel sure that any further unilateral concessions will, if not strengthen, at least not weaken them. The Likud's line is that concessions made in Gaza have already weakened Israel, have encouraged Palestinians to think that it was their armed resistance that has driven the Israelis out of Gaza, and that this very fact has contributed to the Hamas victory in the elections. The Likud may therefore gain in strength between now and polling day.

Leo McKinstry on "Hate Hypocrisy and Hysteria" about Ruth Kelly.

If you can get hold of this article in The Spectator of 21 January 2006, I do urge you to read it. The gutter press (and not only the gutter press) is ill-qualified to raise a moralistic hullabaloo about perverts considering how much it is itself constantly doing to pervert sexual behaviour among the young.

Television programme: In Search of Mozart, Part 1.

Of course one wants images with the text and the music; but why such images as, for example (and there were others) images of today's motorways (complete with shots from inside the car showing the steering wheel and lorries pounding along outside) to illustrate Mozart's journeys across Europe? They are philistine and coarse anachronisms and show a real poverty of imagination by the producers. So much better to devise an 18th century type map to show the route.