The foreign secretary has described a US attack on Iran as "inconceivable".

Speaking after President George Bush was re-elected for a second term, Jack Straw ruled out a strike against the Tehran regime's nuclear programme.

The international community is committed to resolving the crisis "constructively", he insisted, despite calls from Republican hardliners in Washington for the threat of force to be used.

"I don't see any circumstances in which military action would be justified against Iran," Straw told the BBC on Thursday.

"Not only is that inconceivable, but I think the prospect of it happening is inconceivable."

Since his appointment to the Foreign Office he has invested personal capital in wooing Iran  and paid several visits to the country.

Straw claimed that the prospect of another conflict in the Middle East was "pretty remote" after some analysts suggested that the fresh mandate given to Bush this week would reinvigorate his ambitions in the region.

September 11

He argued that the president's controversial first term in the Oval Office, including the divisive attack on Iraq, stemmed from the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in 2001.

"I don't think, please God, that we are going to see in the next four years the most cataclysmic event for international relations that we have seen in 60 years which occurred on September 11, 2001," the foreign secretary said.

"We have all obviously had to take stock of the way in which the world so dramatically changed on that morning on September 11.

"It has changed perceptions. Yes, it has opened up divisions in the international community, but I believe those can be healed."

Opportunity

The second term is a moment of "opportunity" for European countries, the foreign secretary claimed

"People have got particular opinions. I understand that," he said.

"The important thing, however, is for us all to recognise that a democratic country has come to a very clear democratic result, as it happens. It has re-elected President Bush. The US is the largest economy in the world. It is the most powerful democracy in the world.

"It is in everybody's interests - including that of continental Europe where I am at the moment - that we work together with the United States and that is what the prime minister Tony Blair and I and the rest of the government will be seeking to do.

"I think that it is actually a moment of opportunity for the democratic world to come together and to work on items and issues, particularly the Middle East, on which we have seen frustratingly small progress in recent years."