Iran

Imagine you are an Iranian. In 1980 you are attacked by Iraq under Saddam Hussein. The United States decides to support Iraq. The extract below is from an academic report on the matter:

In March 1981 U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he saw the possibility of improved ties with Baghdad and approvingly noted that Iraq was concerned by "the behavior of Soviet imperialism in the Middle Eastern area." The U.S. then approved the sale to Iraq of five Boeing jetliners, and sent a deputy assistant secretary of state to Baghdad for talks. The U.S. removed Iraq from its notoriously selective list of nations supporting international terrorism (despite the fact that terrorist Abu Nidal was based in the country) and Washington extended a $400 million credit guarantee for U.S. exports to Iraq. In November 1984, the U.S. and Iraq restored diplomatic relations, which had been ruptured in 1967.

Twenty years later the United States invades Iraq and issues threats against you. You know that the US has nuclear weapons (actually some 6000 strategic warheads) but worse Israel, although it denies it, has between 75 & 200 nuclear warheads (source Arms Control Association). Would you not want a nuclear weapon? Do you have any grounds for trusting anything the US Government says?

Of course I don't want Iran, or anyone else to have nuclear weapons but threats are not the way to stop it.

For any sort of peace in the Middle East the West has to be prepared to be more even handed, which means being much more critical, of the Government of Israel. Please note I said 'Government of Israel' not 'Jews'. The briefest trawl of the internet throws up many Jewish groups who are horrified by what Israel does.

One of the excuses for invading Iraq was that Saddam Hussein was in breach of UN resolutions. But Israel is in breach of many more UN resolutions, and for much longer, than Saddam ever was. There are no sanctions on Israel. Many more Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army than Israelis by 'terrorists'. Israel conducts an air strike on Syria - silence. The Palestinians are urged to conduct democratic elections - so they do & elect Hamas. Sanctions are imposed. You can have democracy says the West as long as you elect whom we want. And so on for pages.

For goodness sake is it any wonder that the Arab, and Persian, and by association the whole Muslim world is against us.

Whatever we do there will always be fanatics of one sort or the other prepared to commit acts of terror. But we surely don't have to follow policies which push ordinary people who just want to get on with their lives into the 'terrorist camp'.