tony blair says we should now use force against iran.......

[stokemaveric]

yes or no?

[sandyRoe]

Well, the Israelis would agree. Are there any relatives of the Shah still around? We'd need a puppet government.

[NazNomad]

No

[stokemaveric]

he says he sees the destabilasation that the iranians cause within the middle east as they continue to develop nuclear weapons..just because they didnt find any weapons of mass destruction in iraq doesnt mean that iran is not developing any...they are more of a rogue state than iraq ever was and in my opinion pose more of a threat to the west than iraq did...

[sandyRoe]

Knowing what happened to Iraq and what hasn't happened to North Korea, the Iranians must be busting a gut to try and get nuclear weapons.
I can't see what threat they present to The West

[ludwig]

Tony Blair the Peace Envoy?

[beso]

You would think he would be a little more circumspect after the grief he got for taking the country into the illegal war in Iraq.

No doubt he prayed to God for guidance like he said he did for Iraq. However I don't know what other answer he would have expected from his belligerent deity.

[Gromit]

Does he have a good track record at winning wars?

[I.Don No]

the test for a war could maybe be that the politicians advocating it go themselves to the front line or send their children.

[boxtops]

I don't trust that bloke's motives. He's supposed to be our Special Envoy to the Middle East... isn't Iran counted as Middle East, then?

[I.Don No]

TB is now a catholic.... Catholicism and turmoil have always been bedfellows.

[TTG]

Maybe he has some sort of financial gain to be made. I did not trust this man in 1997 and don't now. Why he has not been arrested I will never know.

[anotheoldgit]

In the history books Tony Blair wants to go down amongst the famous, instead he has already gone down amongst the infamous..

[Gromit]

I think Tony Blair has been hanging out with tne wrong people of late.

If it wasn't a sad irony at the time that a man with so much blood on his hands was to be a Peace Envoy, it surely is now.

A Peace Envoy calling for war is a sick joke.

[keyplus90]

///Why he has not been arrested I will never know.///

After all we can't afford to have bad relations with the people who are using his services, our "trusted" ally.

As to the question, I believe whether we want to or we do not, we will end up attacking Iran. Simply because USA wants that and why USA wants that because Israel want that to happen. So therefore it will happen.

[Kromovaracun]

Personally, I don't feel particularly qualified to make a judgement with regard to how much of a threat Iran is (and with all due respect I'm not particularly convinced my fellow ABers are either). While it's not one I subscribe to or am particularly interested in, I can also see the moral argument in favour of intervention.

The most important factor in all this to me seems to be that the country would quite simply not accept it. If you hear people talk about Afghanistan, the way people on average appear to perceive the military situation there is that we're hanging on by our fingernails and constantly losing people in a futile effort to keep control. People also seem to view the country's finances in a similar way. Despite the fact that people are extremely scared of Islamic powers, involving ourselves in such an intervention would severely destabilise our society.

Blair's suggestion is thus highly questionable considering his position, and is not remotely grounded in practical reality. He appears to have (just as implied in the case of Iraq) permanently lost the shrewd insight into domestic politics he demonstrated earlier in his career.

[Whickerman]

Can the west afford a war in iran? I'm not even talking about morally - who would pay for it? The Armed Forces in many countries are being decimated by cuts, there's only so far they can stretch.

[tamborine]

Saudis of Gulf States steer our politics not USA or Israel.

[rov1100]

Tony, bless his soul, does not mean Britain attacking Iran on its own. No he wants the US to use the big fist to trample over a democratic country that feels it wants nuclear weapons to defend itself. He is just trying to stir it up!

[Lonnie]

The short answer is 'no', its a soveriegn state that at the present poses no threat to us, but then again, so was Iraq.