How Britain botched the Iran stand-off

asiatimes: As anticipated, the British government officially accused Iran of complicity in the targeting and killing of its troops in southern Iraq. However, the accusations are weak and clumsily constructed, to the point of being silly. The bomb technology that the British refer to is more than 50 years old, has been used in a variety of conflicts around the world, and is also known to have been in the possession of the former Iraqi military intelligence service.

The real concern is that the Blair government is using Iran as a smokescreen for its increasingly desperate plight in Iraq. The British dilemma in Iraq is simple but also intractable: they have devoted significant resources to the conflict, but have only marginal influence on the real decision-making (which is done by the Americans).

Moreover, there is every reason to believe that the United Kingdom is using the excuse of Iranian meddling in Iraq as a subterfuge for its own plans for a long-term intelligence presence in Iraq and as a device for applying further pressure on the Islamic Republic over the nuclear stand-off. Read more