On Thursday March 16, in the first major restatement of its national security strategy for nearly four years, the White House identified Iran as the single greatest danger to US interests. In the same announcement, the US government reiterated its faith in a policy of “pre-emptively” attacking regimes that it considers to be hostile, the policy that had gone much of the way towards justifying its war in Iraq and which has been widely criticised ever since. The principle of deterrence that had reigned throughout the cold war, the new national security strategy document argued, was no longer adequate to deal with international terrorism.
