Is Britain right to stand to a side in the Iran war? When threatened, allies show up - Carl Les
Difficult to write anything this week other than a commentary on the momentous happenings in the Middle East. A personal view, not the position of the council. Each year following Twelfth Night the Christmas cards come down and get placed in a bag ready to make a list to ensure I don’t forget anybody next time, new addresses and the like.
I say make a list, it’s really just updating the list I’ve been using for some years. Each year since becoming leader and having more contacts to make, I have produced a personal card with my friend and photographer Richard Jemison. These have been scenes from my division of Catterick (Village & Brompton-on-Swale) or my life in the area, usually wintry in the snow, County Hall, Easby Abbey, Catterick Great Bridge over the mighty Swale, one time a map of the new unitary council, with the council motto of Unitate Fortior, stronger together, one time a cartoon reflecting on the commercial success of Leeming Bar Services, once an essential council gritter in the Upper Dales, often photoshopped with Father Christmas present as this year in the grounds of the tiny St John the Baptist in Leeming Village where I lived for the first 12 years of my life. Always accompanied by a piece of narrative on the back explaining the significance of the picture.
This year I’ve been tardy in doing the list until this week, and some thoughts struck me. Firstly, we didn’t receive a single card with glitter, so all can go in the recycling bin. That’s progress. That’s good.
Secondly, with the unwelcome news about the price of stamps, even getting well prepared so all go second class, apart from the odd unexpected card that needs a quick response, it will be a much more expensive proposition to continue to post. It seems Royal Mail has a pricing death wish.
And thirdly, however much we pay for second or first class postage, we are lucky to get more than two deliveries a week in our village. I’ve already cancelled a number of weekly magazines as we don’t get them in the week of publication, thus defeating their business model of concentrating on parcels.
The prime and recurring thought about Christmas cards of course is that of the universal message of wishing goodwill, peace, prosperity, health and happiness in the coming year, to all, of all faiths and none. Indeed all faiths have this as a central theme. So why do extremists of some faiths go outside those themes? And before I am accused of being prejudiced by being white, European, Christian, let me say the Christian faith was no paragon at times, not only the Spanish Inquisition being matched in its cruelty and injustice by many other occurrences in European history.
The Iranian people are a proud and ancient civilisation of well over two millenia standing, made up of numerous tribes and ethnic communities, a population of over 93 million people.
Not all Iranians support their present regime, in the same way that not all Israelis support their government, and not all Jewish people are Israelis. But what is evident is that throughout my life, certainly since the fall of the Shah, our television screens have been full of images of Iranian citizens burning the flag of Israel, and the Stars and Stripes, and hanging effigies of the elected President of the United States, all the while being encouraged to chant death to Americans and Jews.
And there is compelling evidence, we are told, that Iran has continually funded terrorist organisations like Hamas, and Hezbollah, encouraging terrorists to attack western democracies and has supplied drones for Putin to use in his illegal invasion of Ukraine. All the while building a nuclear capability, not for peace but for war.
There is also something disturbing about an American plucked from a populist TV news presenter's job being retitled Secretary of War rather than Defence, and something distasteful about his gloating rhetoric about the first torpedo attack since WWII.
But should the Prime Minister have refused the use of British bases, one a shared asset many thousands of miles away on the basis of legal argument? This centred around the personal attitudes of the Cabinet apparently rather than any acceptance of a clear and present danger, and the lack of a plan.
Do we wait then for evidence until a nuclear missile is launched? When threatened, allies show up. And I say that accepting I have never served in the military, and that those and their families we represent are the ones put in harm’s way.
I do worry about the strategic planning of President Trump, inconsistency is the only consistency, but these aims are clear. Remove any capacity to build a nuclear capability which could lead to armageddon, eliminate the arsenal of 2,000 ballistic missiles whose purpose is offensive, and used indiscriminately on neighbours this week, restore safe passage through Hormuz, and replace the present leadership so full of hatred.
At this moment the Christmas message seems very distant.
Coun Carl Les is the leader of North Yorkshire Council.