THE situation was tailor-made for an undiplomatic outburst by John Bolton, the blunt-spoken US ambassador to the United Nations. Iran’s new president had just called for the destruction of Israel and Bolton has rarely minced his words when assailing the enemies of America and its allies.

Yet the ambassador last week restricted himself to a brief declaration of comparatively modest dismay and conspicuously failed to support Israel’s call for Iran to be expelled from the UN.

Behind the scenes US officials could barely contain their glee. For once President George W Bush’s administration did not need to unleash its rhetorical artillery against the ayatollahs of Iran — the rest of the world, led by Tony Blair, was doing it for them.

The rash public statement by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, that Israel “must be wiped off the map” aroused international condemnation and left Iran looking isolated.

“If they continue down this path then people are going to believe that they are a real threat to our world security and stability,” said Blair, who also hinted at possible military action against Iran.

The row over the novice president’s manifestation of anti-Zionist extremism forced even some of Iran’s most sympathetic supporters to distance themselves from the conservative-led new regime in Tehran.

As Russia, China and other non-aligned nations joined a chorus of complaints at Ahmadinejad’s radical posturing, both American and British officials saw an unexpected chance for a new international consensus on the need to curb Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons programme.

“It’s a fair guess that these remarks will alienate a lot of people,” a Foreign Office spokesman said. “Before this, (countries like Russia and China) were inclined to give the Iranians the benefit of the doubt. Now it doesn’t help their case.”

In Washington a senior US official claimed that countries which had previously been prepared to side with Iran were now “running for the doors”. The official added: “Nobody wants to be associated with someone that outlandish.”

The UN security council in New York condemned Ahmadinejad’s remark in a statement that the president in turn rejected as unacceptable. There was widespread agreement among diplomats that he had seriously damaged his cause ahead of next month’s meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors, which is due to discuss whether Iran should be referred to the security council for its continued work on the nuclear fuel cycle.

The foreign ministry in Tehran said in a statement yesterday that Iran stood by its UN commitments and would not use violence against another country. Yet there were few signs of such pacifism on the city’s streets, where Ahmadinejad joined tens of thousands of demonstrators at anti-Israeli rallies on Friday.

As conservative hardliners carried banners proclaiming “Death to Israel”, the president shrugged off his US and Israeli critics as “cheeky humans” who “think that the entire world should obey them”.

The row has turned an international spotlight on an Iranian politician who was previously best known in the West for being accused — mistakenly, it later appeared — of being one of the student hostage takers who occupied the US embassy in Tehran in 1979.

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