Many thanks to you all for taking the trouble to write in. It’s no surprise that the subject of Iran at the end of the week, once again, elicited such fluency.
My own views are closest to those of the reader who signed his or her piece “Anon” - on the price that Iran seems prepared to pay for its nuclear ambitions, particularly in lost economic opportunity.
Fair point to Spacy Sunday from London for picking me up on the use of “the world” as shorthand for the UN process; I concede, entirely, that the problem would not be so great if Iran had no allies. B Shah from Middlesex offered what seemed a bit of a flippant gibe (“Bravo to Iran for having the guts to stand up to a bellicose, Christian fundamentalist, cack-handed regime such as George Bush’s”). But it does remind me of one Iranian diplomat in London who found a ready formula for raising a laugh by musing “I love America, such a shame to see it taken over by religious fundamentalists”.
The “winners and losers” in Lebanon provoked the most comment. Thanks to Ben from Harrow and Hassan al-Damluji from London for providing opposite views, one after the other. I lean more towards Hassan’s argument about Iran’s growing strength except that I think drawing a parallel with Iraq overstates the case. Iran has clearly been helped by the US’s predicament in Iraq, but part of that is because the US entered that conflict with almost no allies. In Lebanon, there is (so far) a lot of agreement in the region and further abroad about the value of disarming Hezbollah, and that, for a start, begins to limit the benefit to Iran of the conflict, I would think.
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Turkey provoked the most pungent - and succinct - arguments. Thanks to Zengin, from Erbil, in Turkey, for asserting that “In the 21th century, a country that prevents some of its people to use letters like “W” and “X” does not deserve to join the EU”, and to Murat, from London, for the view that “Turkey is much better country than Bulgaria, Romania, or any other countries just joined”. Top prize for, at least, making the Foreign Desk laugh.
Thanks again for writing, and have a good weekend. BM