Hague's ‘Cold War’ warning

Swiss Bob

It all depends on how likely one thinks the Iranians will use or threaten to use their nukes.

If you are on the probable side of the possible/probable analysis then war would seem inevitable this spring.

Note to self: buy a generator, stock up on diesel and water and ask the landlord to finally give me a tour of our recently inspected (by the state) bunker.

daniel maris

When you are about to bomb you send out the chaff.

telemachus'

If Israel has the bomb, why not Iran?

Heartless Curmudgeon

Is a special mark awarded for stating the blindingly obvious?

And will the vacillating H2B follow his Hero and involve us in yet another conflict?

Or will it all be left to the only State that has the bottle to stand up for itself - again?

There again, the Baroness and her innumerable jobsworths are in place to deal with just this sort of issue, aren't they.

Mladen Andrijasevic

Cold War? A nuclear war is more likely if Iran gets the bomb. William Hague does not seem to understand that the doctrine of mutually assured destruction does not work with Iran. See MAD is Dead www.madisdead.blogspot.com

Mladen Andrijasevic

Cold War? A nuclear war is more likely if Iran gets the bomb. William Hague does not seem to understand that the doctrine of mutually assured destruction does not work with Iran. See MAD is Dead

2trueblue

The cold I am worried about is at a much more basic and practical level..... Keeping warm, the lights on and the engine to keep our economy going. In 13 yrs we had the wind agenda pushed and it is not delivering, nor will it ever. We need a reality check to ensure that we are making decisions with our hands tied by our need for energy shorttermism whilst the Greens put us in the dark.

2trueblue

Continually having to rewrite ones comment because it will not load is becoming a bore. It means that your blog has more mistakes in it and is it worth it?

JohnSt

Bizarre i was just looking on eBay at Cold War things and there's some real USSR ICBM Launch Keys for sale on there at the minute! Would love to buy them. Hopefully Iran stays cold aswell, but it's a very scary thought.

David Lindsay

Hans Blix correctly pointed out that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Not that they would have been any threat to Britain if there had been, which was the only question that ought to have concerned us in the slightest.

Now, he correctly points out that there is no nuclear weapons programme in Iran. Not that it would have been any threat to Britain if there were, which is the only question that ought to concern us in the slightest.

Much as I loathe nuclear weapons, I do wonder why Iran does not want them. She is the victim of the world's only outstanding and operative nuclear threat by any nuclear state against any non-nuclear state.

Ostrich (occasionally)

telemachus' 18th, 10:18am

Is Iran unrecognised by most of its neighbour states, several of which declare its destruction as their goal?

Ron Todd

If respectable homeowners were allowed guns why not the local thug and bully?

THOMAS KNIGHT

If Israel has the bomb, why not Iran?

Because Israel is run by responsible people who respect international law, obey UN resolutions, have no expansionist agenda, have never started a war in pursuit of political objectives, and which is an open and pluralist democracy granting equal rights and citizenship to all within its borders

... oh wait a minute ...

Ron Todd

MAD does not work for mad people.

Austin Barry

From today’s Debkafile, the usually reliable Israeli intelligence website:


“In private conversations, Netanyahu has said he feels cheated. By its actions the Obama administration leaves Israel with no recourse other than to grapple with the Iranian menace on its own..”,

Lock and load.

MickC

According to US intelligence chiefs there is no eveidence whatsoever the Iran is building or intending to build nuclear weapons.

At one time Hague was of some consequence. Now he is just a fool trying to feed us nonsense. We went with it once-we shouldn't again.

Cogito Ergosum

I am no friend of Iran, being non-religious. But surely they are entitled to do what they like within their own borders, provided they pay for it themselves.

They should be told, however, that any nonsense outside their borders will be punished.

Davey L.S

Surely an arms race of this type became inevitable the moment Israel secured a nuclear weapon, and this will stay the case now whatever we perceive as the right and wrong option.

daniel maris

2TrueBlue,

Talk about parochial. Look at Germany, Denmark, Sweden. The renewables agenda is working - and wind energy forms an important part of the solution.

Ask the Japanese if you think nuclear energy is reliable.

The sooner we wean ourselves off oil, the better. We can then, with a bit of luck, forget about the Gulf, a lifeless strip of desert and salt water.

daniel maris

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17083791

Iran is sending a warship into the Med. Is it going to attack Rome or Tel Aviv in the event of an attack on Iran? How far can its missiles range?

Axstane

All the more reason to develop our shale oil and gas reserves.

Malfleur

If England has the bomb, why not Nazi Germany?

cg

I wondered how long it would be before someone brought up the Nazi Germany comparison. for some people it's always 1938 and always Munich.

Augustus

"If Israel has the bomb, why not Iran?"

Let's see. In the years since the Iranian regime came to power, it has done the following: Taken Americans hostage in an embassy and held them for over a year; sponsored most of the world's terrorism, based on the findings of every administration in the Western world; threatened its neighbour, Israel, with annihilation, in the process denying that the Nazi Holocaust ever even happened.

Who knows what the truth is about Iranian nuclear weapons. What we do know is that the Iranians intend to 'negotiate' from a position of blackmail. Whether the blackmail is based on credible threats or not, we may never know. We'll only know for sure once Iran has nuclear weapons, because once they have them, they will almost certainly use them to prove it.

Ostrich (occasionally)

@Cogito Ergosum 18th, 12:13pm

"surely they are entitled to do what they like within their own borders, provided they pay for it themselves."

Including their persecution of those of their people who disagree with the government and its imposition of islam?

Robert Christopher

daniel maris on February 18th, 2012 @ 12:21pm

Wind and solar energy have some niche uses, but with current technolgy cannot be considered viable sources of electrical power in Britain. Cold windless British winters are becoming famous! Even when there is constant wind there needs to be plenty of coal/oil/nuclear power station backup to ensure consistent electrical power.

"Norway and Sweden provide Denmark, Germany and Netherlands access to significant amounts of fast, short term balancing reserve, via interconnectors. They effectively act as Denmark’s “electricity storage batteries”. Norwegian and Swedish hydropower can be rapidly turned up and down, and Norway’s lakes effectively “store” some portion of Danish wind power."
http://www.cepos.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/Arkiv/PDF/Wind_energy_-_the_case_of_Denmark.pdf

...

Robert Christopher

Germany Talks Solar, But Goes Coal
...

Robert Christopher

hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/2011/01/01/germany-talks-solar-but-goes-coal/

Robert Christopher

Due to the frost nuclear power plants turned on again in Germany

bnn-news.com/due-frost-nuclear-power-plants-turned-germany-49198

telemachus'

THOMAS KNIGHT

Exactly

telemachus'

Augustus

The West do not have a monopoly on truth or right. It is failure of responsible organs in the West to recognise this that is responsible for most of the trials of the Mid East since 1948.

Cogito Ergosum

In reply to Ostrich at 2.18pm.

Unless we are willing to occupy and rule Iran, we can do no more then whinge at the cruelties of their regime which you so correctly point out.

It is time for us to put an end to the vacuous moralistic busybodying which has for so long replaced any effective British foreign policy.

WIlliam Blakes Ghost

Who cares what Wet Willie thinks he about as useless as a limp member can be.......

Augustus

telemachus'
February 18th, 2012 3:13pm -

What is wrong with you? The ME is a part of the world where virtually no freedom exists, and where Israel stands out as a beacon of individual rights compared to anyone else. Protecting Israel, or more precisely, helping Israel protect itself, is in the rational self-interest of all of
us. It's also an obvious strategic advantage, given the fact that we're completely dependent on oil from the Middle East to keep the lights of civilization turned on.

TomTom

Malfleur is moronic. The only reason the Atomic Bomb was developed is that Heisenberg was working on one for the Nazis and Einstein warned Roosevelt he had to get one first.

As for Pakistan and the rest, it was URENCO, a British-German-Dutch Government Company in Aachen that let A Q Khan steal the blueprints for gas centrifuge technology without which KNorth Korea, Iran and Pakistan had NO hope of building a bomb

telemachus'

And just what is free. Many citizens within the state walls of Israel have been in permanent bondage since 1948.

Patriccia Shaw

I've been looking in on this debate. Hague has it quite wrong. There are no nuclear ambitions in the Arab states but they welcome the fact that the Iranians can stand up to Israel and America representing at present a monopolistic military might. Only when balance will the Palestinians truly be able to stand up to the bully regime of Netanyahu. Then Palestine will be free.

Patriccia Shaw

Please skip the ad and be informed by this

*ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foSbqLi6U10

Replace the '*' with a 'h'

porkbelly

Disgusting to see Hague and his cowardly counterparts in the USA and Europe pausing briefly in their vilification of Israel to desperately urge them to solve the Iranian nuke issue. Afterwards - even if they are successful - it will be back to the baying chorus of Jew-hate (with the usual CH suspects howling away in harmony).

Let's see - moralizing denial of reality by Britain and the USA, rampant anti-Semitism, a rising power led by a power-mad lunatic - no, not like 1938 at all.

Augustus

"Then Palestine will be free."

Free to do what? Wage further campaigns towards Israel's destruction and the expulsion of all Jews from it? Arab and Muslim anti-Semites show understanding and even justify the killing, expulsion, and persecution of Jews, accusing them of bringing the persecution upon themselves by their eternally despicable qualities. According to that approach, Jews, in whatever society they lived brought upon themselves persecution and hatred in each and every generation, including in modern times, and even the Holocaust was the Jews' fault.

Philip747

In the Telegraph article William Hague claimed that "Iran are clearly continuing their nuclear weapon development programme" Where does he get his information from? One hopes it is not a dodgy dossier from British intelligence who got so confused about WMD in Iraq, or information from a pressure group like at Atlantic Bridge, which recently damaged a ministerial career. He might be better reading the recent report by the IAEA which does not support his claim. The report has been much misreported by the press but the Washington Post and New York Times have published retractions of the earlier inflammatory and erroneous claims (Google nyt iaea)

Herbert Thornton

The most determinedly bloodthirsty populations in the world, with governments to match, are those in the Middle East. But they do not include the Israelis. Israelis are instead the first victims on their lists - with the rest of the world's Infidels following closely behind.

The world has already seen how Muslim Pakistani organised terrorism against Hindu India brought the two countries to the verge of nuclear war.

There is no reason to imagine that Iran, once it has a nuclear bomb, will be any more restrained.

To the Islamic mind, the existence of Israel, and the desire to destroy it, is an even stronger compulsion than the Pakistani ambition to seize the whole of Kashmir.

2trueblue

daniel maris The dutch have not turned off any of their other sources of power, such is the reliability of the propellers they have brought into play. Reality is that wind was ditched for steam and we have truely found other more reliable sources. The committee looking at alternative sources had 11 out of 18 with a direct interest in wind farms so this was not a scientific but a straightforward direct financial interest. That is the reality of our arrival at the wind farm scenario. It was not a level playing field. Got to go or it will not accept my piece!

daniel maris

Robert Christopher -

You're way behind the curve on this.

The Germans are already building power stations that will convert wind and solar energy to storable methane, so you needn't worry about the cold windless days (although cold windless days do tend to be sunny, I would note).

There is, however, nothing wrong with operating a continental grid that can balance out supply.

Any comments on Germany's current energy situation. They have a plan and they are on the road to 100% renewables.

daniel maris

David Lindsay -

Please don't rewrite history.

Hans Blix was convinced there were WMD in Iraq prior to the invasion. He opposed the invasion, as he felt his team were making progress, but he never doubted there were WMD, until after the invasion.

It remains a complete conundrum as to when and why Saddam destroyed his WMD (everyone knows they existed because he used them on Iranians and his own people), if indeed he did, and why he didn't invite the UN to witness the destruction.

2trueblue

wind...... give us a break. It is not and will be nothing apart from a big expensive mistake, a big con. We are now sitting on 2 great resources, coal and shale. Our economy needs us to get back to basics and keep the lights on.

Malfleur

cg/TomTom
2:09pm/4.25pm

You both miss the point; go back and think again.

Malfleur

Patriccia Shaw

You have been outed by Frank P at Frank P on
February 17th, 2012 - 15:15 at http://www.coffeehousewall.co.uk/the-coffee-house-wall-14th20th-february/

Clear Memories

The boys a fool!

There is no 'Cold War' - Iran are preparing a weapon of mass destruction, not as a response to the threat of others in the region, but with the sole aim of wiping out a sovereign State, committing genocide against a people because a book of hate tells them to.

They cannot be reasoned with, they cannot be pressured because NOTHING is more important to a Muslim than carrying out the will of Allah, as interpreted by an illiterate 6th Century perv.

You do not sit with a snake and hope it doesn't bite - you kill it as swiftly as possible.

The longer the free world waits, the greater the chance that the Middle East will explode. Where are the CND idiots now? Have they finally grown up? Or, as is more likely, they have realised they were just soviet dupes? Why the silence Bruce Kent and others?

MairT

@Telemachus

The difference between Israel having a nuclear bomb and Iran is Sanity, which the Mad Mullah in Iran does not have. It is also to be noted that Israel has never threatened to wipe Iran off the map. Stop being your usual stupid self telemuchus

Frank P

Patriccky and Telemuck.

You both sound very much like Nick Hadj ...
well, you know the rest, don't you? You're not obliged to say anything , etc.

OhDrImInTrouble

Iran? That's easy. The real wild card here is Pakistan. I mean, they've got the F bomb right now, sorry N bomb; and most critically who/what system in that quagmire looney bin place actually has command and control??

telemachus'

Frank P
Your erudite point?
The Truth cannot be belittled
I only wish Jonathan Jones and co could be more discerning and critical before following the Foreign Office line

Maddy1

February 18th, 2012 10:18am

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If Israel has the bomb, why not Iran?

Iranian kill their own kids in battle of Basra and parasites on jewish inventions?Old technology telemachus we need Dr. Evils laser shining down from the moon on Ramadan now for this situation.