What is Iran up to?

John Keegan has a nice piece in the Telegraph on the causes of the current spat (the British patrol boat incident) and the more general problems Iran poses. This line may well be telling:

"An optimistic Western assessment is that its young people reject its religious government and would welcome liberation from the ayatollahs. A more realistic judgment is that, while Iranian youth seeks liberation, it does so within an Islamic context." And, "National pride will encourage the Iranians to become a nuclear power. Western efforts to prevent it doing so risk being counterproductive."

The Telegraph also has an editorial in which they urge Blair to abandon the policy of rapprochement, coordinated with France and Germany, and shift toward the American position.

Finding the Telegraph a much better review of Iranian affairs, I continue. Granted their men are being held there, but this next story is about the Iranian bomb. I will add here that when a country has this kind of an experience as the British have just had with their soldiers, its revealing of how things really are. Unlike the nice words which the diplomats pour so sweetly, these kinds of incidents are telling. Boris Johnson relates some of his experiences with the Iranian ambassador to Britain. He observes, "In deciding whether a country is suitable to wield nuclear weapons, you may think that its promotion of suicide bombers is not an encouraging sign." So when he asks, "on what grounds, exactly, should one country - no matter how powerful - be able to prohibit another sovereign state from acquiring a weapon that the government of that country may desire?" His answer is, " as soon as they have a full and functioning democracy, they can have the bomb that goes with it."

The Guardian, on the other hand, suggests the possibility of, "a grovelling apology from Britain."