Tehran is determined to develop a nuclear arsenal and would not hesitate to use it if and when it deemed it necessary to advance its strategy of global domination, maintains Coughlin. The message to President Obama is clear: the mullahs would never abandon their nuclear ambitions in exchange for any "carrots" that Dennis Ross, Hillary Clinton's newly-appointed envoy on Iran, might imagine.

Coughlin also portrays Khomeini as the godfather of Islamist terror and directly responsible for scores of kidnappings, assassinations, suicide attacks and a range of "low-intensity operations" against the US and its allies.

The author links the Khomeinist regime to virtually all terrorist operations in which Muslims have been involved in the past 30 years. Broadly speaking, this might well be true if only because the Khomeini revolution and its tactics, especially suicide attacks, have inspired radical Islamists of all persuasions. In some cases, however, Iran's involvement is less than certain. The Lockerbie tragedy of Pan Am flight 103 is one example. Coughlin is categorical that the operation was "commissioned" by Tehran's mullahs. However, years of British and American investigations, followed by a trial that also took years, identified Libya as the guilty party.

According to Coughlin, there is Khomeinist involvement in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He notes: "Tehran took the view that its own strategy of fuelling the insurgency [in Iraq] by all means at its disposal was working. The longer the United States and its allies were bogged down in Iraq, the less likely they were to act over Iran's nuclear programme." He adds: "By the spring of 2007, senior Nato commanders found compelling evidence that the Revolutionary Guards had set aside their traditional antipathy towards the Taliban and were supplying them with roadside bombs and rockets to attack Nato positions, particularly British forces deployed in southern Afghanistan."

As Coughlin shows, the real question is not whether or not to go to war against Iran but how to end the war that Iran has been waging against the US for three decades.