Iran in Iraq

Perhaps the most intersting  piece of real world news yesterday was a story carried in the Guardian about the active part the Iranian authorities are playing in brokering a deal to break the impasse in the government forming process in Iraq, following the deadlocked elections. If this turns out to be correct, Iraq will have a government close to, and an ally of, Iran.

Pragmatically one must say that anything that produces a functioning government in Iraq, which also has the backing of Iran and Syria, must be better than the present vacuum. However if we refer back to the battle plan of the Bush Blair war with its neo-con drumbeat, an Iraq counting Iran as its principal ally, was not an outcome even contemplated in the wildest nightmares of the Pentagon and its trigger happy followers. Added to the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction, the trigger for war, and you have what is without doubt one of the most ill advised and futile wars in history.

That so many brave lives have been lost among the military of America and Britain and innocent civilians in Iraq makes this foolhardy adventure one of the darkest episodes in the record of the Atlantic Alliance.