The Origins of the Great War of 2007

From Niall Ferguson, the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, comes this very believable retrospective on the great war that might yet come to pass. In today's Telegraph with a generous hat tip to Protein Wisdom.

Prior to 2007, the Islamists had seen no alternative but to wage war against their enemies by means of terrorism. From the Gaza to Manhattan, the hero of 2001 was the suicide bomber. Yet Ahmadinejad, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War, craved a more serious weapon than strapped-on explosives. His decision to accelerate Iran's nuclear weapons programme was intended to give Iran the kind of power North Korea already wielded in East Asia: the power to defy the United States; the power to obliterate America's closest regional ally.

Under different circumstances, it would not have been difficult to thwart Ahmadinejad's ambitions. The Israelis had shown themselves capable of pre-emptive air strikes against Iraq's nuclear facilities in 1981. Similar strikes against Iran's were urged on President Bush by neo-conservative commentators throughout 2006. The United States, they argued, was perfectly placed to carry out such strikes. It had the bases in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan. It had the intelligence proving Iran's contravention of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

But the President was advised by his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, to opt instead for diplomacy. Not just European opinion but American opinion was strongly opposed to an attack on Iran. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 had been discredited by the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein had supposedly possessed and by the failure of the US-led coalition to quell a bloody insurgency.

Evil is at march in Iran, and while some people are noticing the developments, most parties are too busy engaged in the camps of either "let someone else do something," or "let diplomacy run it's course."

I do hope that President Bush is engaged in diplomatic activities (and other activities that would drive the NY Times and Democrats crazy,) to get this crises solved before the great war of 2007 or 2008 ever occurs.

Just because Iran is not an imminent threat now, does that mean we must wait until it is before we do something? I suppose the answer to that question is best answered by the likes of John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean and the irrepressible Al Gore.