(Telegraph-UK) Simon Heffer - What is Iran's response to a Security Council warning likely to be? "Get lost." So what do we do then? There have been various mock-terrifying suggestions about forcing Iran to withdraw from soccer's World Cup (for which it has qualified for the first time), or of preventing high Iranian potentates from going abroad on jollies. That this grave matter can be treated in such a fashion suggests that its gravity continues to escape some of the world's senior politicians and their officials. Any military action against Iran, whatever it is and whoever takes it, is likely to be provocative to the wider Islamic community - but none is likely to be quite so internationally combustible as a unilateral decision by Israel to bomb Iran. This seems to leave only one feasible option, which is for a UN-endorsed series of air strikes on suspected nuclear installations in Iran, made after due and reasonable warning and only as a last resort. It must also be made clear by the united powers of the UN that any insistence by Ahmadinejad on pursuing his present policy will be met with such a response.
2006-01-20 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive