IRAN: We'll be comin' round the mountain when we come

These excerpts from 4/18/06 Christian Science Monitor

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has reportedly told US President Bush that Britain will not offer any military support to any strike on Iran.

The Scotsman reported Sunday that sources in the British Foreign Office told the paper that even if the idea of an attack wins support in the international community, Britain will not take part.

Blair is expected to support the call [by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice] for a "Chapter 7" resolution, which could effectively isolate Iran from the international community.



The Scotsman also says that in a report to be published Wednesday, the Foreign Policy Center (FPC) – which the paper says is known as "Blair's favorite think tank" – describes neoconservatives in the Bush administration as on a collision course with Iran. .... "We are in danger of talking ourselves into a war" over the speculation in Seymour Hersh's article in The New Yorker that the US was considering the use of tactical nuclear weapons.


While the sense of crisis over Iran has been escalated by the fiery rhetoric between Tehran and the West - particularly Washington - many within the British government are now convinced that the impasse can be resolved by repeating the same sort of painstaking diplomatic activity that returned Libya to the international fold ...

"The only long-term solution to Iran's problems is democracy," said Alex Bigham, co-author of the FPC report. "But it cannot be dictated, Iraq-style, or it will backfire. Iran may seem superficially like Iraq but we need to treat Iran more like Libya. Diplomatic engagement must be allowed to run its course. There need to be bigger carrots as well as bigger sticks."

The Associated Press reports that even as Ms. Rice presses for the international community to take a tougher stance against Iran (saying, just as the US did before the Iraq war, that the Security Council's handling of the Iranian nuclear issue would be a test of the international community's credibility), Russia's UN envoy Andrey Denisov has insisted that the confrontation be resolved diplomatically.