Editorial

What is being described as a "nuclear slip" by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert - the BBC referred to an "apparent acknowledgement last Monday that Israel possesses a nuclear weapons capability" - has been in the public domain for many years. Indeed, before Mr Olmert broached the subject, the Defence Secretary designate in the United States, Robert Gates, had already referred to Israel's possession of nuclear weapons. This was a secret that never was. Reactions in the Middle East were predictable.

It may be fruitful to recall that the UN's nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, discussed hopes for a nuclear-free Middle East with Ariel Sharon as far back as July 2004. He was later to quote Mr Sharon as saying that this could only come about once peace in the region was achieved. At the time, the Israeli leader was careful to describe his country's policy on the matter of nuclear weapons as one of "strategic ambiguity". The "slip" by Mr Olmert has done nothing to raise his already low profile in the aftermath of the Lebanon debacle last summer.

Middle Eastern countries like Iran and Syria will obviously make much of this, but what they have to say needs to be placed in a context where Israel was once surrounded by enemies wishing to hurl it back into the sea. It took four Israeli-Arab wars to convince countries like Egypt and Jordan, to name but two, that it was in the interest of the region to recognise Israel's right to existence.

Others preferred the way of violence, the latest example being the Hamas and Hizbollah provocations that led to a bloody conflict in Lebanon and one in Gaza that has only recently turned into a precarious truce. In the first, the Hizbollah is trying to wrest power from the legitimate government, an attempt that could escalate into civil war. Hizbollah and Hamas (Syria and Iran as their pay and supply masters) both hold that Israel has no right to exist.

In Palestine, recent actions by Hamas and Fatah also threaten an outbreak of civil war. In Iran that country's maverick President continues to declare that Israel must be wiped off the face of the earth. Only knowledge of Israel's nuclear capability prevents Iran from carrying out its threat. A nuclear Iran will be another matter.

Into this kaleidoscope of violence, the Baker-Hamilton commission recommended to the American President that his government looks to the withdrawal of troops in Iraq and that Syria and Iran be brought into discussions to help with a post-war Iraq and Middle East. But General Sir Mike Jackson, recently head of the British Army, warned that failure to see the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iran "to their proper conclusion would be a disaster".

Needless to say, the Baker-Hamilton report created even more rigidity within the Iranian camp. At an Arab Strategy Forum the other day, the country's national security adviser insisted that the "clearest sign (of a change in strategy by the Bush administration) would be the exit or evacuation of US forces". He added that UN Security Council sanctions resolutions (one had been recently drafted) were "not effective". Baker-Hamilton raised the profile of a country determined to exert primacy as a regional power. Add a nuclear capability to Iran's negotiating powers and its primacy will be there for all to see.

This should be a development the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China should do everything to prevent. They could start by disabusing Iran of the notion that UN Security Council sanctions resolutions are "non-effective".