However, neither the East Asian nor the European precedents seem to be applicable to the Middle East. The success of this strategy in East Asia owed itself to a great extent to the fact that China preferred the US presence and US assurances to a nuclear Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. Germany must be seen in the general context of Nato strategy in Europe. In the Indian sub-continent, there were no other major countries for which a nuclear programme might have been in the cards.

Furthermore, the Iranian drive for nuclear weapons was originally motivated by Iraq's WMD capabilities under Saddam Hussein, but continued not only as a strategic response to the perceived threat from the US and Israel but also as an umbrella under which it can achieve what it perceives to be its well-deserved hegemonic status in the region. Nuclear weapons are also seen by Iran as compensation for humiliation at the hands of the West and as a "membership card" to an exclusive club of nuclear powers. These goals will not be served by Iran achieving a threshold status. Domestic pressures also would make it difficult to forego the nuclear programme. The cost of the nuclear project, the prestige of key figures in the regime and the affront to national pride if Iran were to be coerced into giving up the programme will all play a role. This last consideration has become even more important since the 12 June elections and the subsequent challenges of the opposition to the very legitimacy of the regime.

It also seems unlikely that US assurances will suffice to reassure the (Sunni) Arab countries of the Middle East — particularly if the West fails to prevent (Shia) Iran from achieving a nuclear capability. Iran has consistently called for leaving the security of the Gulf in the hands of the Gulf countries themselves (a euphemism for Iranian hegemony). The failure of the US to prevent Iran from going nuclear and the regional image of the Obama administration as conciliatory towards Iran will diminish any faith that the countries of the region may have in American guarantees. It is also doubtful that domestic opinion in those countries would support reliance on the "infidel" US to defend them against Iran or that public opinion in America would support the economic and military investment in theatre defence for the oil sheikhs of the Gulf. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that Saudi Arabia would acquire a nuclear weapon from Pakistan (whose nuclear programme it funded) and it is hard to believe that countries like Egypt, Syria and even Iraq could allow themselves to be far behind. It would also be reasonable to assume that until these countries acquire a nuclear capability, they will rely increasingly on chemical and biological weapons (the "poor man's bomb"), thus eroding the international taboo on those weapons as well.

Middle Eastern nuclear proliferation may not remain restricted to states. Weapons of mass destruction may filter down to non-state entities in such a scenario in two ways: to any of a plethora of quasi-states with differing levels of control (Kurdistan, Palestine), terrorist organisations (al-Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad) and rival ethnic groups for whom the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a hostile state would be an incentive to acquire at least a limited WMD capability; and to "proxy" or "surrogate" terrorist groups, such as Hizbollah. The Cold War experience, that nuclear powers did not transfer to their allies or proxies nuclear weapons or technology to make them, would not apply. The breach in the dam of proliferation would make it easier for those entities to acquire the weapons and the states might even have an interest in providing them to keep control over their proxies.

If indeed the Middle East becomes "poly-nuclear", the next question is whether the Cold War paradigm of MAD would apply to this region. Some prestigious experts accept the premise that a nuclear Iran will most probably lead to a nuclear arms race, but draw on Cold War experience to argue that such an eventuality may not be as catastrophic as it seems. A nuclear Middle East, they argue, may even provide a more stable regional order based on MAD. According to them, the very possession of nuclear weapons tempers military adventurism and inculcates a degree of strategic responsibility. These experts point at the fears that permeated the Western military establishments of a nuclear China and the fact that a nuclear Indian sub-continent did not result in nuclear war, despite mutual hostility and frequent crises.

This reassuring scenario does not seem likely for two key reasons. The bipolar paradigm of the Cold War differed fundamentally from the complexities of multipolar deterrence that will emerge in the Middle East. And the existence of a credible "second-strike" capability on both sides, which characterised the Cold War from an early stage, will be absent from the Middle East for the foreseeable future.