Joanna Blythman on western arrogance

If I was Muslim, I would take great exception to the ill-mannered reception that greeted Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in New York earlier this week. Introduced by his host, Columbia University's president, Lee Bollinger, as "a petty and cruel dictator" with a "fanatical mindset", Bollinger took it upon himself to speak for "the modern civilised world" (the implication being that Iran is wholly backward and barbaric), and "express revulsion at what you stand for".

This echoes George Bush's stereotyping of Iran - one of the oldest and most influential civilisations in the world - as a renegade statelet run by a lunatic.

Ahmadinejad's request to visit Ground Zero was also refused, which will further confuse the millions of Americans who still earnestly believe that Saddam Hussein had something to do with the Twin Towers attack. They will now assume that Iran, by dint of being Muslim, a neighbour of Iraq and not predisposed to bend the knee to US foreign policy, must also be implicated as a 9/11 conspirator.

In fact, the Iranian response to this tragedy was characterised only by sympathy. Nevertheless, the New York Post said Ahmadinejad should "go to hell" if he went anywhere near Ground Zero.

Ahmadinejad is a smooth operator. He was in New York to show that if there is warmongering going on, it is not on his side. Bush is warming up the bath water for a military strike on Iran, by alleging that Iran is building a nuclear weapon. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency can find no evidence to back up this claim. For his part, Ahmadinejad has insisted that Iran's nuclear programme is for peaceful (energy) purposes only, and pointed out that his country has not broken any international agreements by developing this capacity.

Bush might possibly be right. Wily Ahmadinejad could be concealing a nuclear weapon or be on the point of realising one. But on the roll-call of leaders who represent a threat to world peace, Bush tops my list every time, while Ahmadinejad trails well behind. Bush's grasp of foreign policy is always ruthlessly self-serving and must be forever suspect, given his preparedness to use bogus grounds of weapons of mass destruction to justify invading Iraq.

Having got the US into an intractable Vietnam-style mess there, a bloody war that is increasingly unpopular with Americans, what better ruse to distract from that fiasco than to manufacture yet another crisis to justify an air strike on Iran ? Let's hope that in the intervening four years Americans have wised up and start questioning scaremongering about foreign security threats, especially when they come smothered in cheesy homilies about Americans being able to sleep safely in their beds at night.

Even supposing Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, why shouldn't it be allowed to? In saying that, let me underline my lifelong opposition to nuclear weapons, both domestic and foreign, starting with childhood attendance at CND Ban-the-Bomb demonstrations. Like most Scots, I totally support Alex Salmond's resolve to use every possible strategy to prevent a Trident replacement being sited in Scotland. The world would be better off without nuclear weapons entirely. But, when a select band of countries is allowed to have them, what right has the US to ordain that countries such as Iran are not responsible enough to be allowed the same capability? Why is it acceptable for Israel to have nuclear weaponry, but not Iran? Throughout the entire Muslim world, this perceived injustice will rankle and fester, making moderate Muslims more sympathetic to the arguments of fanatics.

Of course, Ahmadinejad is no hero. If his homophobic and anti-women government repels you, just think how any chance of him being replaced by a more progressive leader will evaporate if he is increasingly seen throughout swathes of the Islamic world as a plucky champion, standing up to the bullying US.

There are grounds for scepticism too on his portrayal as an unreconstructed anti-Semite. Ahmadinejad achieved near satanic status when he was reported as saying that Israel should be "wiped off the map". Farsi experts say that he was mistranslated, and that a more accurate version might be that "the regime now occupying Jerusalem" must either be "eliminated from the page of history" or alternatively "vanish from the page of time".

The important point here is that his comments sought removal of the Zionist regime in Israel - a position shared by many Israelis and a wide international community - not the end of Israel.

What you need to do with someone like Ahmadinejad is talk and negotiate, not insult and provoke, yet the US only continues to heap pressure on its allies to threaten him. George Bush basks in his self-appointed role as king of the world, and is driven by the NeoCon notion of New American Centuryism: the philosophy that promotes US global leadership. Has Britain become more savvy?

Foreign secretary David Miliband has offered a glimmer of hope with his circumspect remarks about Iraq, and reflection that while there are military victories "there never is a military solution". But will he remember this when George Bush starts bending his ear over Iran ?