The question in the mind of most people is whether the execution of Saddam Hussein will contribute to a decrease or an increase in conflicts (of minds and weapons) that dog the Middle East? So far, and contrary to expectations, there has been no noticeable upwards ratcheting of violence in Iraq, but these are early days.
What accompanied the execution, whether one is in favour or against capital punishment, the images of the tyrant's last minutes and the behaviour of those who were present at the execution, will not have contributed to a diminution of the sectarianism that is doing so much damage to the political process by which, correctly, the United States had set such store. Why the enterprise was so badly botched remains to be discovered and the sooner answers are given the better.
The point now is that Saddam was not executed in a vacuum. The Middle East remains a tinderbox not because of that execution but more so because of the dynamics that inform Iraq and the whole region. The possibility that Iraq will break up into three, one area under Sunni control, one under Kurdish control, one under the majority Shi'ites, grows every day that the Iraqi government fails to clamp down on violence.
The additional help of 20,000 to 40,000 American troops, should these be sent, will help in the short run, but it is clear that at the end of the day it is the Iraqis who have to find a modus vivendi. Their failure to do so is a failure at the level of government; the Iraqis have twice bravely made a democratic choice.
Iran continues to pose an ever-greater threat to the stability of the region. Its determination to become a nuclear power - President Mahmoud Ahmadinajad was quoted as telling a gathering in Teheran on Christmas Eve that Iran is a "nuclear country" whether the world liked it or not - will see to that. It has contemptuously shrugged off mild United Nations sanctions even as its President wrote to Pope Benedict about the resolution that made them possible.
Two weeks before their imposition, Iran hosted a Holocaust denial conference to which nobody of any academic excellence went. The event was indirectly criticised by the Vatican, which called the Holocaust "a great tragedy before which we cannot remain indifferent".
Note that it was in response to the Holocaust that the state of Israel was created by the United Nations. Holocaust denial removes that state's legitimacy and Mr Ahmadinajad has expressed a determination to eliminate that state, anyway.
Unsettling as Iranian ambitions are to the region, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been upstaged, remarkably, by a Palestinian-Palestinian conflict that at one stage threatened civil war between Hamas and Fatah supporters. In Lebanon, the Hizbollah movement has been organising mass rallies calling on the Lebanese government to resign - this after the son of a former Prime Minister had been assassinated and a finger pointed at Syria.
In the context of all this, it would be optimistic indeed to see a silver lining in the storm clouds that have settled over the Middle East. Yet, it is just such a silver lining that has to be found if there is to be no descent into a general war inside the region and, possibly, outside it. There is not much evidence to suggest that this urgent discovery will be made. It would be a mere euphemism to remark that this is a pity. It is a catastrophe.