FOR A MAN in the midst of a political crisis, Ariel Sharon is eerily serene.

The last of Israel’s founding warriors, facing a no-confidence motion that could bring down his Government and make an already convulsed Middle East even more complex, is explaining the fecundity of his cross-bred sheep, his wariness of the smiling Englishman and his frustration that a passion for classical music performances has been thwarted by a necessary security presence that makes the experience more theatrical but less musical for the rest of the audience.

“I don’t want to bother people,” he says, with a modesty that is either absolutely genuine or political histrionics of the highest order. Sharon, however, likes to convey the impression that he is the most reluctant of politicians, distracted from a career in law and a love of the land by a combination of duty and destiny, and looking forward to returning full-time to his fertile sheep who give birth three times every two years and deliver an average of 1.8 lambs per pregnancy.

And yet this is the most dominant politician in the region, whose subtle (and not so subtle) changes in domestic tactics and international tack demand responses from virtually every government east from Westminster to Washington. His career has tracked the rise and expansion of Israel, and he has been personally involved in its military successes and blamed for acts of extreme brutality.

He is both charming and blunt, sometimes simultaneously. In assessing the politeness of the English, he notes from experience: “You are polite. All of you are polite. Later you do what you want to do. You always smile when you cause us many problems in this country.”

At 74, he is the master of his brief. He ticks every political box and makes sure that the message is not missed. The Palestinians are often “Arabs” — to describe them otherwise would imply an unintended acceptance of traditional territorial legitimacy. He has the figures in front of him, but does the mental arithmetic anyway to explain that 646 Israelis have been killed during the violence of the past two years, which would be the equivalent of 6,460 deaths in Britain (“I don’t know what Great Britain would have done”). He could have emphasised the extent of the human tragedy by citing the losses on the Palestinian side, but this is a region in which an “eye for an eye” has become “two eyes for an eye”.

The state of relations in the region can be crudely described as a varying mixture of hope and fear. Rarely in recent times has there been less hope and more fear. Sharon’s sense of self-belief is rooted in his perceived reality of an Israel under constant threat from its enemies and unsure of the long-term loyalty of Arab neighbours with whom friendships have been formed.

“I know I have been portrayed as a general looking for war. Many other headlines speak of that. That’s what people say. But I understand the importance of peace because I saw the horrors of war. That’s how I see it. I lost my best friends in battles — and I had to make decisions of life and death, of others and myself.”

There is a strong possibility that there will be another war in the region some time soon, a war against Iraq. Sharon is careful to distance himself from the planning in London and Washington: “We are not interfering in these things. We will support every decision that will be taken by President Bush and his ally, Prime Minister Blair, because we know maybe better than others the dangers of terror: global terror, regional terror and local terror.”

Washington is, indeed, hoping that Israel will do nothing, fearing that its involvement will undermine the tacit support of Arab allies. Sharon indicates that he has agreement from the US that taking out Iraq’s missile capacity would be a priority of any military campaign. He cannot bring himself to rule out retaliation, but the strong hint is that if Iraq fired off a conventional Scud or two, Israel will sit out the conflict, but there would be an overwhelming response if there were a biological attack.

While Sharon regards Iraq as “a very, very dangerous country led by an insane regime” (he then asks an aide in Hebrew if there is a stronger word than “insane"), he considers that Iran is a “centre of world terror”, and that as soon as an Iraq conflict is concluded, he will push for Iran to be at the top of the “to do” list: “Iran makes every effort to possess weapons of mass destruction on the one hand and ballistic missiles. That is a danger to the Middle East, to Israel, and a danger to Europe. They are working now on a ballistic missile (with a range) of 1,300km. They have almost reached this range already. They were talking in the past about 2,500km and even 5,000km. Later when they saw Europe was worried about that — and they needed materials and parts and equipment — they said they weren’t going to develop the 2,500km.”

He sees Iran as “behind terror all around the world” and a direct threat to Israel. He claims that it has sent rockets to Lebanon via Syria, and is a problem in Palestinian areas, where Iranian money supports extremists. His newest concern is within Israel itself, where he has fears about Iranian influence on a “small minority” of the country’s one million Arabs. This is an extremely sensitive issue, given that Arabs already feel insecure in Israel, but Sharon suggests that he will soon crack down on Islamic activists, a campaign that could change decisively the psychology of the country.

Apart from the lessons of war, Sharon bases his political philosophy on his experience on his farm, Sycamore Farm, which, for American consumption, is sometimes referred to as a ranch: “I believe that Jews and Arabs can live together. It’s not an easy thing but I believe we can reach an agreement. I don’t want to pretend about talking to Arabs because I meet Arabs, here and on our farm at home. I would like to very careful not to pretend but I think I am one of the only ones here at the present time that will have the power and the strength to tell the citizens of Israel what they have to do and to make compromises and painful compromises, to look into their eyes and say that.”