Attending a world food programme summit in Rome on June 3, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declared that Europe was suffering because of the “Zionists” — but went on to reassure his audience that, though Europe was “bearing” the political burden of this “false regime”, Israel would soon cease to exist “with or without” the involvement of Iran. Ahmadinejad’s inflammatory rhetoric is sure to strengthen the view that Iran’s nuclear programme is a problem for Israel — but not necessarily a threat to the West, which can afford to live side by side with a nuclear Iran and somehow deter it, as it once deterred the Soviet Union.

Even if deterrence spares the West from a nuclear holocaust, what would the world look like if Iran acquired nuclear weapons — as the latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency suggests it will? The Soviet Union, it should be recalled, gained nuclear status long after it ceased to be a revolutionary power — and it still managed, under its nuclear umbrella, to act with impunity in many corners of the world. Iran, by contrast, is a revolutionary power, bent on trying to upset the status quo of the region — and beyond.

As a power bent on exporting revolution abroad, Iran is not only involved in destabilising Iraq and sabotaging Western efforts to pacify Afghanistan. It also sees itself as the sponsor of radical Islam throughout the region — whether Shia or Sunni — and the champion of all radical causes. It is therefore involved in various crisis points — not only in Iraq, where Iran trains, funds and arms Shia militias, but in Lebanon and Gaza too, sponsoring Palestinian terrorism, destabilising Lebanon’s fragile democracy, rearming Hezbollah and offering a strategic alliance to Syria. Everywhere one sees trouble in the area, Iran is involved. Even in Afghanistan, Iran is supplying its former Sunni foe, the Taliban, in order to check the West on its borders.