The London bombings will probably do for President Bush's poll ratings what his latest speech on Iraq could not: provide a temporary bump upward. But the key questions for the American people will not long remain obscured by renewed fears of terrorism: Is the Iraq war making us safer? Just what is the reason so many Americans are being killed and maimed?

Although Bush has long been despised in much of the world because of his war in Iraq, I have recently found there is one country in which our president is very popular, and the identity of that country can help us a great deal in answering those questions.

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Robert S. McElvaine teaches history at Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss.
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I was recently in South Korea, where I was making a presentation at the triennial Women's World's Congress. Some 90 nations were represented, but in talking there with people from many of those countries, I found only one where conference attendees said that Bush is popular: Iran.

Several conference participants from Iran told me that, among Iranians, Bush is now the most popular of all American presidents.

This information came as no surprise, but it was striking to have what seemed likely to be the case so directly confirmed, albeit only anecdotally.

The reason for Bush's popularity in Iran is not difficult to find. Although both he and the mullahs and new president who rule Iran are religious zealots who are always labeled "conservatives," that shared fundamentalism is not the basis for the American president's popularity in Tehran. Both are fundamentalists, but disagree on the particulars of the fundamentals they follow.

The reason for Bush's great approval in Iran is reminiscent of the view President Theodore Roosevelt took of a war that broke out in East Asia a century ago.

When Japan attacked the Russian fleet at Port Arthur in Manchuria in 1904, launching the Russo-Japanese War, Roosevelt wrote to his son and namesake, "Between ourselves, for you must not breathe it to anybody, I was thoroughly pleased with the Japanese victory, for Japan is playing our game [in East Asia]."

He meant that Russian dominance in Manchuria was keeping out the trade of other nations, particularly the United States, and that American interests were served by another nation checking Russia and opening up the region to free trade.

Roosevelt also saw that a prolonged war between two of the United States' rivals in East Asia would be especially beneficial to American interests because it would weaken both of them.

After waiting until a long war had exhausted both sides, Roosevelt iced the gift cake that Japan had baked for him in the form of its war against Russia by inviting diplomats from both belligerents to Portsmouth, N.H., to negotiate a settlement from which neither side would emerge as clearly victorious—and then was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, which had actually been directed toward advancing American interests.

Who, then, won the Russo-Japanese War a century ago? The United States.

In the current war of the early 21st century, Iran finds itself in a situation analogous to that of the United States in the war of the early 20th century between Japan and Russia.

By eliminating Saddam Hussein, Bush has removed the biggest counterweight to Iranian dominance of the region and accomplished for Iran — at no cost whatsoever to that country — what it was unable to do for itself in a long and horrible war in the 1980s.

On top of that, while fighting the Iranians' war for them, Bush has exhausted American military resources in the effort and has no credible military threat to use to pressure Iran.

When American troops leave Iraq, which eventually must happen, the result of the Bush war in Iraq will become apparent to all: Iran will emerge as the dominant power in the region.

So remember, in future years if someone asks who won the American war in Iraq, the correct answer will be: Iran.