earlier hoped to construct and was received as a
prodigal son by Western leaders. Sanctions were
lifted and with Western investment in oil he hopes
to restore his country.
Islamic terrorists inspired by al-Qaeda have
attacked all the established regimes in the Middle
East whether secular like Syria, Egypt and Jordan
or Muslim like Saudi Arabia. The common enemy
has created shared interests with the US and the
West. The defeat of Islamic terrorism is the pri-
ority aim of all and with it the preservation of sta-
bility. But shared interests had to be balanced
against the growing Arab anger at the way the
West has acted in Iraq since the second Iraqwar as well as the US support of Israel. The one
regime that best weathered this crisis without
undue damage is Iran. The clerical leadership has
posed no threat to the region; discontent among
the younger generation with clerical authoritari-
anism was held within bounds. Democracy and
freedom of the individual is a fine vision for the
future but wherever authoritarian regimes have
been removed a transitional phase with strong
leadership has been one way forward. The chal-
lenge is to bring about accountability to the
people, popular control of government, rather
than necessarily slavish copies of the Western
forms of democracy.