Hawks and doves.

Shimon Peres, architect of Israel's nuclear programme in the 1960s, has managed for fifty years to pass as a dove, so what is a hawk like? He has been in Washington this week, warming up the Administration for Netanyahu's visit next week. He warns that Iran's alleged search for nuclear weapons threatens the whole world.

Perhaps it won't work. Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller said on Tuesday that America wants Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. How awkward it is that Iran is already a signatory, and indeed is on the committee preparing the review conference for next year!

Despite all the propaganda about Ahmadinejad being the new Hitler, there is nothing to suggest that Iranians are irrational. If they obtained nuclear weapons they would be subject to the same logic that kept America and the Soviet Union from mutual destruction. Nor should the language of 'wiping Israel off the map' be taken as a call for the wiping out of Israelis. East and West Germany were wiped off the map twenty years ago without anyone getting killed. The world would be a more peaceful place if those Israelis who don't want to share a state on equal terms with Palestinians went back home to America, Australia, South Africa, Russia and Europe.