Emanuele Ottolenghi's book, Under a Mushroom Cloud: Europe, Iran and the Bomb (Profile Books), deals with Tehran's pursuit of a nuclear capability and its consequences for peace and stability in the Middle East.

Ottolenghi, an Italian scholar who also writes a monthly column for Standpoint, shows that the Iranian programme has all the hallmarks of a scheme designed to produce nuclear weapons. Yet the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is unable to say so with certainty, while successive US administrations have been unable to produce a "smoking gun". In fact, one American National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), published in 2007, even suggested that Tehran might have abandoned key aspects of the programme.

The key powers have tried to deal with the problem by kicking it into the long grass.

Ottolenghi shows that the European Union has done so by initiating endless talks with Tehran. The idea is that as long as one is talking, one need not worry. The Americans have tried to deal with the issue by periodical threats and the imposition of largely symbolic sanctions. President Obama has just extended sanctions on Iran for a year, presumably absolving himself from doing anything else on the issue for a further 12 months. He has also announced that he would follow President George W. Bush by sending an emissary to the forthcoming talks between Iran and the so-called 5+1 group - the US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany.

The Russians feel no need to do anything, hoping that, if the mullahs do real mischief, the Americans will deal with it. The Arabs are caught between a rock and a hard place. They fear a nuclear-armed Iran but are unwilling to help stop the bomb by defying the mullahs and risking retaliation. Instead, they are launching their own nuclear programmes, thereby contributing to a new era of proliferation. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Syria and Egypt have already announced nuclear programmes, ostensibly for civilian purposes. In effect, everyone hopes the problem will just go away.