Tuesday 1st July

A year ago, when we were on the brink of joining in the civil war in Syria and only drew back because of the opposition of Ed Milliband and the Lib-Dems, which in turn caused the Americans to stop and think too, we were warned that this war had the possibility of spreading throughout the whole Middle East.  The fear was that if we got involved on the rebel side then Russia would openly support Assad.  This was way before Ukraine became the battlefield between Russia and the West, but Syria was seen as too dangerous to get involved in.  William Hague did meet some leaders of the rebels and made his usual popmpous declarations of how terrible Assad was.  We were approaching the rhetoric used before we attacked Saddam.

Well even without our intervention it has got a whole lot worse, with the rise of Isis now threatening Iraq.  They have now declared an Islamic Caliphate over the territory they hold, effectively redrawing the boundaries the French and us drew in the sand a hundred years ago.  The only real opposition they have encountered was from the Kurds in the north of Iraq, who are now on the cusp of realizing their own longheld ambition of statehood.  Iran and Russia are now arming the Shia government in Iraq, and Isreal is warning of the dangers of allowing Iran back into the international fold.

It is all hellishly complicated and there seems no way to bring peace to the whole region.  How it will all end is anyones guess.  Don’t discount Isreal getting involved either.  The public in Britain and America are war-weary and will not allow either country to send troops in, thank goodness.  It is more than likely that the current situation is largely the result of Western interference anyway; Isis wants to do away with Democracy and all other Western nonsense.  Over to you Mr. Blair – you are theMiddle Eastern envoy, and by the way you are partly responsible for this mess anyway.