Letters | 17 March 2012

Israel’s dilemma

Sir: Jeffrey Goldberg (‘Israel isn’t bluffing’, 10 March) is probably right, but if Israel does attack Iran, they are in a no-win situation. Iran is a large country some distance away. One or two bombing missions will have little effect — look at the weeks it took for Nato to degrade Libya’s defences.
Either Israel fails, in which case that leaves it in a weak position, or else it succeeds in bombing Iran into submission, in which case Russia will have to upgrade Iran’s defences, probably helped by China, because an Israel so strong it could dominate the entire region would be unacceptable.
The best we can hope for is a token attack, such as the one against Syria a few years ago: more a political statement than a genuine act of war.
Andrew Levens
Cirencester

Ukip and the bogeyman

Sir: I am astonished that Rod Liddle has joined the establishment, the BBC, and other media in trying to discredit Ukip by associating it with the BNP. Surely he knows that Ukip, the only party to offer us an alternative to the stranglehold of Europe, has wide and growing support? The defection of the Conservative MEP Roger Helmer to Ukip is a very recent example of this.
No attempt to resurrect the BNP corpse will frighten away British voters. They know that the unelected and destructively incompetent European bureaucrats are the source of almost all our problems. They know that the Westminster parliament does little more than administer EU projects, such as the preposterous High Speed 2.
They know that a corrupt EU elite now runs our country and our lives, with a hideous caricature of a parliament as a front. Rod Liddle is on the wrong side this time. I was born a free man in a sovereign state governed by a parliamentary democracy.