WHITHER IRAN? A nation of young, well-educated, western looking people, governed by a medieval theocracy, with whom we shall have to go to war eventually. On arrival at the border crossing point from Turkmenistan I was somewhat surprised to see the walls of the hut where immigration formalities were conducted to be plastered with posters warning of the dangers of AIDS – and this in a country where buggery is illegal. I was further surprised to be summoned into an office to be questioned by an amiable English-speaking Iranian who wanted to know a great deal about my medical history, including whether I had ever had AIDS. I had not been singled out as apparently everyone entering the country by land is similarly interviewed. Assuring him that I had not, he stamped my passport and welcomed me into the Islamic Republic of Iran. As the UK is regarded by the Mullahs who govern Iran as the Little Satan (The USA is the Great Satan) it had seemed to me that having the passport of an innocuous country whom no one disliked might be a good idea. As I had been born in Ireland (as the Great Duke said, being born in a stable does not make you a horse) I applied for, and was granted, an Irish passport, which I have found doubly useful since leaving the French Third Empire.
If your verdict on Iran is "we're going to have to go to war with them anyway, therefore let's assassinate our way through their government until their young people rise up in support of us and spontaneously create in Iran what we could not enforce in Iraq"... are you not better off adopting Colonel Blimp as a nom de plume?
If your verdict on Iran is "we're going to have to go to war with them anyway, therefore let's assassinate our way through their government until their young people rise up in support of us and spontaneously create in Iran what we could not enforce in Iraq"... are you not better off adopting Colonel Blimp as a nom de plume?
I think that there is an almost equal chance that Iran will go to war with itself.