Writing in this week’s New Statesman, former weapons inspector Hans Blix calls Israel’s use of the Stuxnet virus to hobble the Iranian nuclear programme and its assassination of the country’s nuclear scientists an “outrageous, gangster-style war”. So if you have solid evidence to believe that a country is developing the means to wipe you off the map, you are akin to a “gangster” when you seek to prevent that? Interesting argument…

Mr Blix’s solution, of course, is for the entire Middle East to go nuclear-free. Good idea. But how? “All parties must renounce nuclear weapons”. Right. We'll get Mr Ahmadinejad's verbal agreement on this. Hands up all those who think a man who has lied repeatedly about his nuclear weapons programme can do an honest deal over his nuclear weapons programme.