Typical line of questioning from the Ba'ath Broadcasting Corporation this morning when John Humphrys interviewed Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on Radio 4's Today programme. Since Iran, Humphreys asserted, presented a WMD threat far greater than Iraq had done, why weren't we adopting the same approach we had taken towards Iraq by invading Iran? Straw properly dealt with the two twisted assumptions behind this question: 1) Saddam's WMD programme was well documented and beyond doubt and 2) we had only invaded Iraq after 12 years of fruitless negotiations. It is staggering that the BBC's highest profile interviewer can not only fail to acknowledge such facts but be allowed to broadcast such prejudiced distortions. He then went on to challenge the propriety of affording President Bush a state visit, as if Britain were honouring a war criminal -- which no doubt Humphreys thinks he is.

At the same time, he was right to put Straw on the spot over the division between Britain and the US over Iran. Britain has reverted to type in wanting to cosy up to Iran and play down the seriousness of its WMD threat. As this piece in the Telegraph makes clear, Iran has lied about its WMD programme for 18 years and has covered up the progress it is making towards developing nuclear weapons. One of the core lessons of the Iraq debacle is that the west cannot again tolerate being given the runaround from endless diplomatic manipulation. The Iran threat has to be defused.

Posted by melanie at November 12, 2003