Oldfart,

Yes sir, saber rattling is a diplomatic tool.

It is most unlikely that nuclear weapons will be used in Iran, or anywhere else for that matter. That being said, each time the Executive office states that it is not planning to use nuclear weapons, it carefully avoids stating that the use of conventional weapons is also not being planned. The European line expressed recently by Mr. Solana that "any military action is definitely out of the question for us" is another way of saying that military action is not out of the question for a country that is not of the EU.

While I thought that the Russians also had a hand in the making of the Iran-Iraq border, it must be acknowledged that HM’s Government bears much of the responsibility. One of the unintentional consequences of empire.

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Eudaimonia