The " drumbeats to war " !

There is a certain inevitability about the threats being exchanged between Iran and Israel.  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president has made it quite clear that he wants Israel " wiped from the map " and the country's supreme religious leader,  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has described it as a " cancerous tumour ".

On the Israeli side, Prime Minister Benjamim Netanyahu has made it clear that Israel can not afford to stand aside and allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons, and there is past precedent of the Israeli armed forces destroying a nuclear reactor in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was making similar threats against the Israeli state.

Iran is undoubtedly pursuing a nuclear course, but it claims that this is for peaceful purposes and claims the right to use nuclear fission for the generation of electric power.  This claim is refuted by United Nations nuclear inspectors who state that the level of uranium enrichment is heading to weapons standard and the direction of research is unmistakably part of an arms race.

There is no doubt that Israel's nationhood poses a vexing question.   It was created by the United Nations while the whole world was reeling at disclosure of the horrors of the Holocaust after the end of the second world war.   There was sympathy for the Jews - but in providing a Jewish homeland it was necessary to dispossess the Arabs of land they considered their own.

A number of wars have been fought over this very question, and so far on each occasion the Israelis have emerged victorious.   There have been suggestions of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel, but neither side can agree on it's borders - or on sharing Jerusalem as a capital.

Now we are approaching the final confrontation.   Iran is just months away from developing the nuclear bomb - and they have declared that it is their intention to attack and destroy the Jewish state.  
Many Israeli's feel that for sheer survival Israel must destroy the Iranian nuclear industry before that happens.   Clearly - we are on the brink of a war between these two countries.

Just as the first world war was the result of overlapping treaties between European states, so a conflict between Iran and Israel has the potential to draw in the two great opposing power blocks of the present world.

Common sense - and a great deal of luck - prevented the rivalry of the cold war from developing into a nuclear exchange which could have abolished life on this planet.    Unfortunately, this time around it is not political rivalry that is the issue.    It is a headlong clash of religion - and when religion enters the picture - common sense flies out the window.

We have every reason to be very - very - very afraid !