A flurry of news yesterday evening, among it Slovakia’s rejection of the euro bailout and even more ado about our Defence Secretary. But nothing nearly as striking as the alleged Iranian plot to murder the Saudi ambassador to Washington. Drugs, money, geopolitics,
potential mass slaughter — this is a web of the most tangled and terrifying kind. And, according to US officials, it all leads back to Tehran.
Assuming that that’s the case, there can few more alarming reminders of the threat posed by Iran. Here is a regime that is bent on terror and destabilisation — and bent, also, on acquiring a nuclear weapon. Little wonder why politicians from Tony Blair to, yes, Liam Fox are waving red flags about the situation.
But what will it all come to? Even by the standards that Iran has set in the past, this would have been a horrifically provocative act. It is provocative even without the death of an ambassador, and others with him, on US soil. “This really, in the minds of many diplomats and government officials crosses a line that Iran needs to be held to account for,” is how Hillary Clinton described it last night.
For the time being, there are questions aplenty — many of them posed by Simon Henderson at the Foreign Policy blog. Why would Iran risk bringing war upon itself? Was this actually a plot by the Iranian government and military, or by rogue elements within it? Can we expect more aggression like it? How will Saudi respond? etc. etc. CoffeeHousers, your theories, please.
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