Ahmadinejad may end up as Genghis Khan with a bomb

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may end up as Genghis Khan with a nuclear bomb

Iran will not be shamed into abandoning stoning, or its nuclear ambitions, says Alasdair Palmer.

Joseph Stalin was once described as "Genghis Khan with a telephone". President Ahmadinejad may soon be Genghis Khan with a nuclear bomb. Admittedly, Ahmadinejad hasn't yet committed mass murder on that scale, although when he promised to "wipe Israel off the map", he showed that he would – if only he could. And he may treat his own people slightly better than Genghis Khan treated his. But as Dr Johnson said, "there is no settling orders of precedence between a louse and a flea".

Ahmadinejad has imprisoned thousands for protesting against the brutality, incompetence and illegitimacy of his rule; he has condoned the imposition of the death penalty for any Muslim who converts to another faith; and he supports punishing adultery by stoning those involved to death.

There has been a global campaign to persuade Iran to end stoning, a disgustingly barbaric punishment which inflicts pain of the same order as impaling, Genghis Khan's favourite method of execution, and may take even longer to cause death. It centres on the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 44-year-old mother and widow who was convicted of adultery in 2006 and punished with 99 lashes. She has been in prison ever since, as the judges decided that 99 lashes wasn't a severe enough sentence for the crime of loving someone who isn't your spouse: she deserved to be stoned to death.

When her lawyer (who fled Iran, after discovering that he was about to be arrested) alerted the world, the campaign began. A petition was created; more than 300,000 people signed it; several celebrities stated their disapproval in the strongest possible terms; and a number of Western governments made official protests.

And what happened? Far from condemning stoning, or reducing the punishment, Iran's Supreme Court has just ruled that a couple who had both been convicted of adultery should also be stoned to death. The authorities seem impervious to attempts to shame – or at least to embarrass – them into disowning such a medieval practice (although to be fair to the Middle Ages, stoning wasn't that common even then).

The reason is that a large portion of Iran's leadership, and of its population, is not ashamed or embarrassed: they think stoning is entirely right and proper. It has divine sanction – so how can any mere human be entitled to question it?

This is the reality of multiculturalism: human rights are not universally recognised or accepted. Barbaric practices can be deeply embedded in the convictions of thousands, even millions, of people. That is why it is so hard to change them, and why the invasion of Afghanistan, for instance, has not had the results that were hoped for. In rural areas, the arrival of Western troops and aid has not transformed the locals into Westerners. They may not love the Taliban's version of social care, but they prefer their own ways to ours, and those ways are a lot closer to the Taliban's vision of the good society than to ours.

What will persuade Iran's leaders, and many of its rural and improverished voters, to respect human rights and to give up their attempts to acquire a nuclear bomb? No Western country is going to invade and occupy Iran: the experience in Iraq has put an end to our flirtation with the idea that we can transform countries for the better by invasion. But we cannot shame or embarrass Iranians into changing their ways when they are proud of stoning, and of their struggle to get nuclear weapons.

Probably the only thing capable of stopping Iran from getting the bomb is a successful raid by Israel or America on its centrifuges. But that would merely delay Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons, rather than prevent it from happening.

So it looks as if it is inevitable that we will be confronted by Genghis Khan with a nuclear bomb. It is unquestionably a terrifying prospect, and one which may produce Armageddon. We need to work out a way to stop it, and fast.