Twenty-six years after the Islamic Revolution the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems to have lurched back towards radicalism.

Many revolutions have passed through an initial quiet period after an early phase of radicalism, only to experience a resurgence years later. The initial quiet is often marked by corruption and a retreat from revolutionary goals. Believing stronger pursuit of revolutionary ideals is the only way to strengthen their country, idealists seek to inspire a return of the radicals, triggering conflict with pragmatic co-revolutionaries.

The Mexican revolution of 1910 began with peasant uprisings and worker revolts, The revolution's radical phase seemed to end in 1920 when Alvaro Obregon seized power; he limited land reforms and sought reconciliation with the United States. For the next 14 years General Obregon and his ally, Plutarco Calles ruled Mexico.

Then, in 1934, resentment against corruption led General Calles to choose an honest idealist to become president. That honest reolutionary Lazaro Cardenas, toured the country building popular support and then turned on Calles, expelling him from Mexico.

In 1938, 28 years after the reovolution began, Cardenas provoked a confrontation with the US and Britain by nationalising Mexico's petroleum. Only in the 1940s, after Cardenas left power, did Mexico turn to a more conservative path.

Similarly, China's communist revolution began with a decade of attacks on the middle classes, culminating in the Great Leap Forward of 1958-59. That disastrous campaign weakened Mao's influence while pragmatists like Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping grew stronger.

Mao worried that his revolution was going off track, and in the mid-1960s he launched an effort to regain control by educating a new generation of radical youth. The Cultural Revolution tore China apart, returned Mao to supreme power and allowed him to purge the pragmatists.

But in the early 1970s, moderates gained by engineering a reapproachment with the US, capped by President Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972. Deng was rehabilitated the following year, and in the late 1970s after Mao's death, pragmatists seized control of the regime.

What do these historical examples suggest for Iran? It is likely that the relative calm dating from Ruhollah Khomeini's death in 1989 is over. The election of Ahmadinejad marks new struggles within the ruling Islamic Republic party. These pit the honest radicals - led by Ahmadinejad and supported by younger revolutionaries known as the Abadgaran, or Developers, who are strong in the Iranian parliament - against the more currupt and pragmatic mullahs who head the party, led by former president Hashemi Rafsanjani. Supreme leader Sayyid Ali Khamenie is in the middle, increasingly isolated.

How should the US and European leaders respond? Historically, phases of resurgent radicalism have lasted 5-10 years, marked by aggressiveness against internal and external enemies.

This bodes ill for improved relations with Iran in the short run, and makes it imperative that Western powers unite to make it unambiguously clear any use of nuclear weapons or materials by Iran or terrosit groups aligned with Iran will result in an immediate and devastating response. (China developed nuclear weapons just befores its Cultural Revolution, mainly to deter the Sovient Union, but never used them).

It also seems advisable to offer positive incentives - including US recognition and an end to sanctions - that could empower pragmatists in their intra-party struggle much as Nixon's overtures to China helped blunt China's radicalism and strengthened the hand of pragmatists inthe Communist Party.

Nixon did not demand that China abandon communism or that Mexicao become a democracy, only that they act responsibly and learn to do business with the US. China is still not a democracy, and Mexico is only just becoming one. Neither country always sees eye to eye with the West. But both became counties with which it is possible to do a great deal of business, and both are increasingly integrated in to the global economy. That may be the only realistic goal to taming Iran.

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