As the White House resorts to intellectual demagoguery to manipulate world opinion on Iran, Iraq and the United Nations, some things need articulation. One is that despite the intensity with which a `demonize Islam` project is being promoted worldwide, real engagement with the `religion of peace` is being vehemently discouraged, thus promoting a peculiar impotence aimed at facilitating American unilateralism. The UN Security Council reflects the pro-Western balance of power after the Second World War. Its proposed expansion to accommodate the economic might of Japan and India is a ruse to accentuate its pro- Western tilt, and is hollow because of an intellectual failure to admit the necessity to politically engage Islam as a growing and assertive world force, said an expert Sandhya Jain in an article in a leading English daily, `Pioneer`, Tuesday. To be relevant and credible, the UN Security Council must acknowledge the burgeoning sentiment against the evangelical-cum-neo-colonial agenda of the dominant West, and offer other major religious groups a seat at the high table. To begin with, the UN General Assembly can either extend statehood status to all billion-strong religious groups, or terminate the special privileges of the Vatican. She said that India deserves recognition as representative of the worldwide billion-plus Hindu community, not as a Western dhimmi state. Among Islamic nations, Iran alone makes the grade. The recent remarks of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be seen as an Islamic quest to engage the world more equally. Certainly the Holocaust happened, but Mr Ahmadinejad is within his rights to question why land for European Jewry was not found on the European mainland where they suffered centuries of brutal persecution long before the advent of Adolf Hitler, she suggested. Mr Ahmadinejad senses that his country is going to be subjected to the crippling sanctions that killed millions of Iraqis. Iran put itself on America`s hit-list by deposing the Shah, but Washington could not contemplate physical action until public opinion had built up against the excesses of the mullahs. Now with the Iraq action sparking off Shia resurgence in the region, the situation has become volatile. Accordingly, the client state of Israel has been asked to prepare for a pre-emptive strike against Iran`s allegedly secret uranium enrichment sites (The Sunday Times, December 11, 2005), and International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed El-Baradei has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Sandhya said that this is a thinly veiled bribe to vindicate the proposed US action against Iran. Anyone doubting the veracity of this statement has only to recall that the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo of East Timor, and secessionist leader Jose Ramos Horta. In 1998, the US Catholic Conference pressed for making `the promise of the 1996 Peace Prize a reality...`; in 2002, East Timor became independent. El-Baradei is already echoing the US view that the world is `losing patience` with Iran. America`s tragedy is that only Shia Iran, secure in the memory of its ancient Persian civilization, medieval Islamic might and modern oil wealth, can mitigate the force of radical Islam. Shias sought to link the legitimate succession to the Prophet to his direct descendants and clan; this alone can give Islam stability and rootedness, and enforce limits upon it, she added.