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Mr Bush must listen to his allies

Leader
guardian.co.uk, Sunday February 10 2002 17.29 GMT

America's foreign policy on Iran promises a regional disaster. The country which spawned revolutionary Islam two decades ago has recently been undergoing a process of reform encouraged by the diplomatic engagement of Britain, Europe and even the United States. Now its inclusion in George Bush's ill-conceived 'axis of evil' (alleged to sponsor international terrorism) threatens to demolish that fragile restructuring.

The evidence that Iran is sponsoring terrorism and thereby threatening US interests is flaky at best - as it is for North Korea and Iraq. The reason Iran is on Mr Bush's hate-list is because it defied his support for Israel when, last month, it financed a shipment of arms to the Palestinian Authority of Yasser Arafat.

The fallout from this policy, a policy condemned by the EU's external affairs commissioner, Chris Patten, as 'absolutist' and 'ill thought-out', has already seen an intensification of the row between Britain and Iran over London's choice of a new ambassador for Iran. Mr Patten rightly warns that America cannot go it alone, driven by the triumphalist sense of its own rightness that followed the defeat of the Taliban.

Instead, Mr Bush must recognise that it is in America's interests to moderate its hawkish foreign policy. Otherwise, it risks not only worsening relations with already-hostile states, thereby undermining its security, but also damaging friendly alliances, particularly within Europe. In the aftermath of 11 September, when America discovered the extent of others' hostility, it must see that it needs all the friends that it can get.