Much has been made of President Barack Obama’s early and, to some, undeserved Nobel Peace Prize. How could a president leading a war in Iraq and a surge in Afghanistan possibly deserve a peace prize?

The answer may be that Obama is the only statesman with the moral imagination to avert a third, and far more catastrophic, calamity — a war with Iran.

In his Nobel speech, Obama was the first to concede that “compared to some of the giants of history who have received the prize — Schweitzer and King, Marshall and Mandela — my accomplishments are slight.” But there is nothing slight or simple about Obama’s quest for peace with Iran. Iran is the key to unraveling the tapestry of war in the Middle East.

The forces aligned against peace in the Middle East are formidable. Virtually all the hawks have a stake in discrediting Obama’s diplomacy.

Obama’s peace offensive not only threatens the anti-American world view of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, but the political and economic monopoly of criminal cartels plundering Iran in the name of Islam. Resurrecting the Great Satan is the only way the ayatollah and his revolutionary guards can unite the Iranian people behind their odious coup. Even if Iran’s nuclear arsenal were nothing more than Ahmadinejad rattling a tin can, exchanging the illusion of power to secure peace and prosperity would further undo his pretenses.

The Arab world also has an interest in war. Having funded Saddam, the Saudis and other Gulf states view the United States military as their new warhorse against Iran. As long as the United States views shia Iran as a threat, it will ignore the toxic role its ally, Saudi Arabia, plays in exporting their intolerant brand of Wahhabi Islam into Afghanistan, Pakistan and East Africa through proxies such as the Taliban, al-Qaida and Pakistan’s ISI.

Having used the manufactured threat posed by Iraq’s nuclear weapons program as casus belli, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli right wing also have an interest in a clash over Iran’s nuclear program. Netanyahu has granted Iran’s hardliners a veto over the Arab-Israeli peace process — he has linked Israeli concessions on settlements to Iran’s nuclear program. Obama must either neutralize Iran’s nuclear program through diplomacy, or, failing that, through sanctions and strikes. But, if Obama were to broker a nuclear deal with Iran, a rapprochement between Iran and the United States would unleash an even greater existential threat. Netanyahu would be cornered into ending a military occupation that could trigger a civil war with his religious right. And the Palestinians would have to end their civil war to secure a peace that would weaken Hamas. But which Israeli or Arab politician would be foolish enough to follow in the footsteps of Prime Minister Rabin and President Sadat — risk assassination as down payment for Obama’s peace efforts?

In the United States, the deck remains stacked for war with Iran. Neoconservatives and the Christian right attack Barack “Hussein” Obama’s diplomacy toward Iran and the Islamic world as proof that he is soft on terror and weak on national security, while, in the wake of the Iran protests, liberals view nuclear negotiations with Ahmadinejad as a betrayal of democracy and human rights. As a politician, Obama must also resist the temptation of war as a ploy to stimulate the economy and boost his electoral prospects.

As for America’s global challengers, China, Russia and Europe all stand to benefit from political and economic decline in the Iraq and Afghan quagmire. Why not keep America out of Iran by using the nuclear issue to profit from the threat of sanctions and strikes?

Perhaps no man can resist the domestic and international forces pushing the United States, Israel and Iran into the trap of war. But Obama’s commitment to his vision of peace, even while in war, makes him every bit as great as King and Gandhi were. As he put it in his Nobel speech, nonviolence may not always be practical or possible, but the love that King and Gandhi preached “must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.”

No matter how faint the hope, in this season of peace, that North Star must guide us all.

This article originally appeared in Deseret News.