Is peace with Iran possible?

Iran’s pursuit of nuclear power and the subsequent potential to develop atomic weapons is a problem that just refuses to go away. In spite of President Obama’s attempts to normalise relations between the United States and Iran and the persistent activism of the United Nations and the EU to broker a deal, a viable solution remains far off. As we speak, the International Atomic Energy Agency is pressing the regime for access to inspect its nuclear sites.

Six years ago, then President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair were successful in persuading Libya to abandon its nuclear programme, leading to a gradual thaw in relations between the three nations. So, why has striking a similar agreement with Iran proved so impossible? Simply put, Iran boasts far greater power and influence, in what is probably the most volatile region in the world, than Libya ever did. Specifically, the Iranians possess a weapon potentially just as devastating as the nuclear bombs they are accused of developing: oil. More to the point, they have the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf: their territorial waters through which, it is estimated, over 16m barrels of oil are transported every day.

Furthermore, Iran is not your typical adversary in the military sense. Its available arsenal doesn’t just include conventional weapons. Rather, it is their unprecedented influence in post-Saddam Iraq, their domination of the fragile Afghan economy and their support for Hezbollah in Lebanon that, combined with their nuclear programme, pose such a serious threat to the regional interests of the United States and perhaps most notably, Israel.

Much has been written on the potential for an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear installations, and while American support for military action appears less likely under the Obama administration, it cannot be ruled out. Economic sanctions are the weapon of choice for now though; both a realistic alternative and more likely to secure wide international support. This has been compounded by regular joint American and Israeli war games in the Gulf, presumably to show the Iranians what they’re capable of.

Yet such sabre-rattling appears fruitless when compared with each country’s record on actual conflict with Iran, indirectly or otherwise. Israel’s war with Lebanon in 2006, largely seen as a dress rehearsal for a potential showdown with the Islamic Republic, as a well as a test-run for Israel’s US-made ‘bunker busting’ weapons, resulted in a humbling withdrawal. Similarly, the US invasion of Iraq was seen by many neo-cons in Washington as an ideal opportunity to topple the Ayatollah by establishing a secular democracy on the Iranians’ doorstep. However, if any country was infiltrated and re-modelled from the inside, it was Iraq. The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), that swept the board in the country’s first federal and provincial elections after the invasion, was created by Ayatollah Khomeini himself in 1982.

Nevertheless, the Iranians have little cause for complacency. They are not invincible and there is only so much provocation the United States and Israel will tolerate before they conclude that military action is their only option. Iran’s ‘oil weapon’ may be potentially devastating to the US, but it would seriously hamper its own economy too. International opinion is not on their side either, with even their trusted Russian allies appearing more open to the idea of sanctions following Obama’s rapprochement with the old enemy.

Diplomacy is still an option, but there are many sticking points. According to Ephraim Kam of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, in order for a Libya-style deal to satisfy the West, Iran would have to give up its nuclear programme, end its involvement in terrorism, cease its disruption of the Arab-Israeli peace process and improve human rights in Iran. In turn, the Iranians want guarantees for their security, large-scale technological assistance and greater influence in the region.

The problem is that the United States have refused to put any of the other issues on the table until they secure a concession on the nuclear question, while the Iranians have been understandably reluctant to give away their biggest bargaining chip before any real negotiations begin. The Europeans have attempted to address this by proposing a ‘comprehensive dialogue’ agreement, but without an American commitment to talk, it is worthless.

However, there is another way. A bilateral agreement with Israel to halt all uranium enrichment in return for total nuclear disarmament (surely Iran’s biggest motivating factor for going nuclear in the first place), subject to the supervision of the IAEA could end the standoff and prevent the imminent proliferation of atomic weapons throughout the rest of the Middle East. There was even a fleeting report in the press last week of secret meetings taking place between Israeli and Iranian officials to this end. How accurate those reports are and how viable such a plan would be, however, remains to be seen.

Europe - the great missed opportunity

When the historians come to write the obituary of the outgoing Labour government what will they say was the greatest missed opportunity of their 13 year reign? According to the New Statesman, Tony Blair told his friends, upon leaving office, that the greatest regret of his premiership was abandoning what his one-time mentor Roy Jenkins called the “breaking the mould” options open to him in the wake of new Labour's landslide victory in 1997.

Several of these options still remain open to Labour in its final months under Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, including: the introduction of proportional representation for the Commons, a fully elected second chamber and a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. However, the single greatest missed opportunity that may never come by again, and by far Blair’s biggest regret, is the failure to overturn decades of British hostility to the EU.

In 2001, Tony Blair appeared to have successfully cemented Britain’s position at the heart of Europe. The Kosovo war had brought with it a mutual recognition by leading EU member states of the need for a single European foreign and defence policy to prevent the horrors of ethnic cleansing on their doorstep from ever happening again. Britain’s entry into the new single currency also seemed highly probable, if not inevitable, while the euroscpetic Conservatives were in disarray and languishing in the polls. So what went wrong?

Blair’s hesitation over the Euro was initially stymied by a lack of support from his then chancellor, Gordon Brown, and a threat to withdraw public support altogether by the Sun newspaper. Nevertheless, he planned to force the issue in a speech to the Trades Union Congress on September 11th 2001. However, his speech was never delivered as two airplanes were flown into the Twin Towers in New York with dramatic ramifications for British foreign policy thereafter.

9/11 similarly affected plans for a single European foreign and defence policy as the invasion of Iraq that followed led to the biggest rift in transatlantic relations since the fall of the Soviet Union as Britain prioritised its alliance with America over its relationship with Europe. However, it was additionally hampered by, amongst other things, a chronic underinvestment in defence by the big EU 3, Britain, Germany and France, and concerns in Washington over a potential threat to the remit of NATO.

However, the election of a multilateralist President in the United States and the onset of the Great Recession have gone a long way to mending relations between Britain and Europe. Indeed, as the world faces up to the grim reality that the biggest challenges of the 21st century, such as climate change, regulating the global economy and tackling the proliferation of nuclear weapons, cannot be combated by any nation state alone, there has never been a more important time for the UK to take a leading role in European integration.

Yet just as the conditions for rapprochement fall into place, a Labour government that for so long took the European Union for granted looks set to be replaced by a Conservative one that wants little or nothing to do with it. As a result, Britain will be consigning itself to isolation at the very moment it cannot afford to stand alone. What’s more, the rest of Europe will not wait forever.

How important is the Prime Minister's health?

The blogosphere is alive with rumour of a new government conspiracy, that Gordon Brown is hiding a serious illness and is no longer fit to govern. Although the queue of people waiting to deride the Prime Minister as unfit to lead the country (most of them within his own party) grow longer by the day, this rumour, it would appear, has legs. What started as a random blog post by journalist John Ward has now escalated into widespread media speculation, drawing in the likes of Paul ‘Guido’ Staines, Matthew Norman of the Independent, Simon Heffer of the Telegraph, and even Andrew Marr.

The rumours started when an absent minded civil servant allegedly disclosed to Ward a long list of food items that the Prime Minister was strictly forbidden from eating on doctor’s orders. Ward ran a check on the list and quickly discovered that doctors commonly forbid their patients from eating such foods whenever they administer a certain type of anti-depressant known as Monoamine Oxide Inhibitors or MAOIs. These are among the strongest anti-depressants available and are so potent that if combined with the forbidden foods, they can be fatal. Ward also suggested that Brown was losing the sight in his right eye (he is already blind in the left).

As a result, Brown of late has found himself bombarded with questions on his health with many speculating –or hoping- that he might resign before the next election due to health reasons. Brown has promptly denied all charges, insisting that he is not depressed and not on any medication and also that the sight in his right eye is as good as ever. While his sight is unlikely to remain a big source of contention as, let’s face it, total blindness is neither an easy ailment to hide, nor a reasonable disqualification for office, media interest in his mental health is unlikely to go away.

Only Gordon Brown’s doctor, and perhaps his family, knows whether he is genuinely suffering from an illness of any sort, mental or physical, and I don’t intend to join the ranks of bloggers and journalists who have decided they won’t let the absence of medical expert opinion stop them from making wild accusations of a government conspiracy to hide the true state of the PM’s health. However, the story has undoubtedly raised the question, and not for the first time in British politics, of whether democratic accountability should extend to the health of our elected representatives, even at the expense of doctor patient confidentiality.

David Owen, who was a neurologist before he became a Labour MP and eventually foreign secretary in the 1970s, recently published an intriguing book, ‘In Sickness and in Power’, in which he catalogued all the most notable cases of world leaders who have covered up their health problems over the last hundred years, from David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson to Francois Mitterand and Tony Blair. He clearly identified many cases in which a leader’s failure to disclose the true state of their health had seriously affected their ability to govern, often with wide-ranging ramifications for international affairs too. The problem, he further argued, was that the absence of any law formally requiring them to undergo an independent medical assessment during their time in office, meant any decisions to disclose any illnesses were ultimately left down to the discretion of power-hungry politicians alone.

I couldn’t agree more with Owen and, while some may reasonably argue that the popular stigma associated with mental health issues in particular would mean that no politician would ever be fairly judged, I contend that the public interest (including national security) must ultimately outweigh any leader’s right to patient confidentiality. Moreover, I believe that the only way to counter the kind of stigmatisation that led Guido Fawkes to lead with the title ‘Is Brown Bonkers’ for his story, is for the detailed nature of such illnesses to be openly presented to the public for what they really are – treatable medical conditions. More importantly, a Prime Minister with nothing to hide will not hesitate to bring in the best medical professionals for treatment whenever necessary. One with a secret illness, fearful of drawing public attention, would be more likely to pretend nothing was wrong leading to the worst case scenario of their health deteriorating in the middle of a crisis.

Stop and Search - Are the Police too powerful?

Are the Police too powerful? Are the Police racist? Do they abuse their powers? These are the questions that immediately surface whenever the words "stop and search" are uttered, recalling memories of the infamous SUS laws and their application in Brixton prior to the explosion of the 1981 race riots. However, the issue has been re-ignited of late by the rise of Section 44 anti-terror powers which allow police officers to search anyone without the need for reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. Yet stop and search held no real significance for me until I too was searched by police under Section 44, three years ago.

It was a hot Summer day in July 2006 and I was waiting for a friend of mine to arrive at my local tube station so we could go on together to another friend's house for a barbecue. I planned to stay the night there so had come prepared with my sleeping bag stuffed into a big rucksack on my back. My friend was late, unsurprisingly, but as he was coming in by tube and only needed to cross platforms to begin the second leg of the journey, I went through the ticket barriers and waited for him just behind them in anticipation of what turned out to be his not so imminent arrival.

Suddenly, two burly men, both over 6ft and kitted out entirely in leather (in 30 degree heat), approached me and showed me their police ID. They asked to search me and the contents of my rucksack under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act - I say asked, but it's not like I really had the option of saying no. Next, they asked if there was anything in my bag that could harm them if they opened it, which sounds as ludicrous a question today as it did then. After going through my rucksack, they made me turn around and put my hands up against the wall as they 'comprehensively' frisked me in front of other passing passengers, which now included my friend who had turned up just in time to catch the show. I even distinctly remember a man with a shaved head and several tattoos, dressed like a Hell's Angel, tutting at me disapprovingly as he walked through the ticket barriers. They then filled out a form taking down all my details: white, male, early twenties etc. It was a long list that also included my height, eye colour, description of the clothes I was wearing along with my home address. Finally, they gave me a copy of the form and headed off, sweating profusely in their Knightrider-esque attire.

Most of my friends that day reacted with horror when I told them this story. I chose to take a different perspective, however, mainly because I was technically loitering just behind the ticket barriers for about half an hour with a big rucksack on my back, almost exactly a year after a major terrorist attack was carried out on London Underground by guys wearing big rucksacks on their backs. More importantly though, I actually felt heartened that the police had stopped me because they were genuinely suspicious I might be a member of a secret Hampstead enclave of Al Qaeda, as opposed to singling me out for the colour of my skin or the length of my beard (which was short, albeit a tad unkept). This surely was progress since the days of the SUS laws with plain clothed officers on every street corner in some parts of London, regularly searching vast swathes of the black community without warning and often without reason.

Alas, an independent review of terrorism legislation in the UK, carried out by Lord Carlile QC in June of this year, found that the police have been carrying out "self-evidently unmerited searches" on thousands of people simply to give "racial balance" to their own stop and search statistics. In other words, it was far more likely that the reason I was subjected to an embarrassing search in broad daylight was so the police could report they were at least now searching as many whites as ethnic minorities. Furthermore, according to Home Office figures, the number of Section 44 searches carried out by Police in 2007/08 increased to 124,687 from 41,924 the year before, with less than 1% resulting in an arrest. Almost 9 out of 10 of those searches were carried out in London, with the entire capital designated a blanket Section 44 zone by the Metropolitan Police.

Perhaps they haven't made that much progress after all.

Why drugs should stay illegal

More articles like this can be found at www.the-vibe.co.uk

I seem to be falling into the habit of writing whole articles purely in response to an article someone else wrote that I happened to find interesting. This time, it was the recent article “should we decriminalise drugs” that got me interested. The first point that is important to make is the de-criminalisation of drugs is often confused with legalisation. Under de-criminalisation, the law would not change, it would simply no longer be enforced, with the aim of reducing the burden on the criminal justice system by not forcing the police to arrest every guy they catch with a spliff. Only legalisation would lead to the wholesale reforms that advocates say would create a new regulated market, taking power away from drug dealers and curing the social ills normally associated with the use of narcotic substances.

So, why don’t we legalise drugs? I think one point that has been consistently missed in this debate is that drug habits cause crime because drugs cost money – not because they are illegal. Their addictive properties result in what economists call ‘inelastic’ demand. In other words people will pay through the nose to get hold of them regardless of how much money they actually have available to spend on them. Taking drugs out of the hands of gangsters working out of a crack den and placing them with the likes of Glaxo Smith Kline, therefore, would have next to no effect on the root cause of all their associated social problems, their price. This is because, legal or not, the laws of free market economics still apply.

This leads us on to the issue of supply. Most of the hard drugs feeding users’ habits over here come from somehwhere else; Cocaine from South America, for example, and Heroin from Afghanistan. The cultivation of poppy and coca bush fields is a violent business. Many innocent people are drawn into the industry as their only means of escaping poverty, fast becoming dependent on international drug trafficking gangs and paramilitary groups for their livelihoods. Drug farming also has a lot of nasty side effects including massive damage to the envirnoment, as acres of forests are demolished to make way for new farms, and the displacement of other farmers trying to make a living out of useful products…like food. Of course, the laws of economics apply just as readily here and as legalisation would have no effect on demand, it would do nothing to halt the supply of drugs, and all the devastating consequences that come with it, either.

So, what about de-criminalisation? The case of Portugal who, de-criminalised drugs in 2001, is interesting, but needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. Much has been made of a recent Cato Institute study which sung the praises of the Portuguese government’s approach to drugs. Yet, as an outspoken libertarian think tank and proponent of liberalising drugs laws, their impartiality is questionable. Indeed, several critiques of the study have led to accusations that the institute ‘cherry picked’ the start and end years of the various age groups at the centre of their analysis in order to get more favourable results.

However, it is impossible to dismiss all their findings, especially those that clearly indicate a drop in drug related deaths and an increase in the number of people seeking treatment, since the introduction of the laws. In this respect, governments such as our own who go to the other extreme, throwing anyone with a drug problem in jail should take note; addicts need treatment, not jail time. Nevertheless, it is important that drugs remain illegal because the only way to reverse their ruinous effects on society is to take users off the streets until drugs are no longer a viable commercial product, depriving the dealers of their profits. This can only happen by making treatment compulsory under pain of prosecution. In the long term though, we will need more than simple domestic reforms to deal with the supply of drugs, but tackling demand is a good start.

The case against assisted suicide

The recent success of MS sufferer Debbie Purdy in persuading the country’s most senior judges to back her call for a clarification of the law regarding assisted suicide has prompted a new national debate on the issue. The pro-euthanasia lobby, buoyed by the news that approximately 75% of the population now also support the full legalisation of assisted suicide, are more confident now than ever of achieving this, their ultimate goal. So, is it time for Parliament to reverse its long held position?

If I were an MP, I would need to be convinced of three things to vote for a bill to legalise assisted suicide: 1) that there was a clear need for a change in the law; 2) that there was evidence of clear consent free from external pressure (unscrupulous families and financial difficulties) and unaffected by any internal disorders (clinical depression); 3) that the right to die is as important as the right to life.

1) Does the law need to be changed?

It certainly needs to be clarified as the Law Lords’ ruling pointed out. At present, although no charges for assisting suicide by accompanying a patient to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland have been brought against anyone, the consequences of doing so remained clouded in uncertainty. This is because the government is all too aware of the rising public support for assisted suicide and does not want the national debate that would surely result from an arrest. Were the polls to change, however, they may be more inclined to throw the book at ‘offenders’. In any case, not pressing charges amounts to a tacit endorsement of assisted suicide, so the government needs to explain its position once and for all.

2) Can clear consent to die ever really be provided?

Consent is a fluid concept. The idea that you can write into law a means of gaging the difference between someone who is 100% certain that they are ready to die and that they have not been pressured into the situation by unscrupulous relatives, their own inability to afford the standard of care they require, or by a serious bout of depression – an expected side effect of being terminally ill – is clearly fallacious. For example, in the U.S state of Oregon, often cited as a model for an assisted suicide law in the UK, last year almost a third of those who decided to end their lives prematurely cited the pressure of being a burden on their families as the main reason for doing so.

3) Is the right to die as important as the right to life?

A 2007 review of Euthanasia in the Netherlands, carried out by the Dutch government, revealed that out of the 3500 people who died through assisted suicide, 900 died by ‘involuntary’ euthanasia. The majority of these patients were either comatose, unable to communicate or suffering from dementia. The most common reasons for ending these patients’ lives given by the physicians responsible included: ‘no hope of recovery’, ‘the family couldn’t take it any more’ and ‘these patients have as much right to die as any other’. Furthermore, the extension of assisted suicide in Holland to include people with severe depression raises the question of how you stop the legalisation of assisted suicide for terminal patients from gradually expanding into assisted suicide on demand for anyone who simply feels they are no longer in control of their life. The answer is you can’t. The abortion laws in this country and the gradual erosion of every safeguard put in place to prevent it being used as a form of contraception as was feared by David Steel, the Liberal politician primarily responsible for its legalisation in 1967, demonstrate this clearly.

In summary, there are few causes more noble than those that aim to minimise or prevent the suffering of others. However, the path to Hell is paved with good intentions which is why the BMA continually refuses to support the calls for legalisation of assisted suicide. It is therefore imperative that Parliament resist these pressures too. Doctors already exercise considerable discretion in helping terminal patients to pass away peacefully and painlessly, while directing the bulk of their efforts to providing the high standard of palliative care our terminal patients enjoy today. One wonders how long the private and public investment that maintains that system would last if death became an alternative form of ‘treatment’ and how many terminal patients, desperate to live out what few years they had left in comfort, would suffer as a result.

Why we should return to the Moon

It is 40 years since Neil Armstrong took his giant leap for mankind after landing on the Moon on the 20th July 1969. Unfortunately, mankind has stood rather still since then as manned exploration of the unknown has significantly dwindled. It is not hard to see why; the capitulation of the Soviet Union in the race to the Moon eliminated the biggest incentive for going there, competition for national prestige. On top of that, spending cuts and high profile disasters such as the tragic loss of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, and their respective crews, also took their toll, while NASA’s failure to impress anyone with repeated moon landings and the International Space Station led to a collapse of public support for space exploration altogether.

The last few years, however, have seen the rebirth of the ‘space race’ as China and India, determined to establish themselves as the world’s newest great powers, have aggressively pursued their own space programmes. It was, after all Lyndon Johnson who said, when the Apollo programme was still in its infancy, that “first in space means first in everything”. Indeed, both nations are acutely aware that they will be playing catch-up in everything until they match and then exceed all of America’s achievements in space. As a result, they are busily planning manned missions to the Moon, resurrecting the extra-terrestrial ambitions of the United States, and indeed the Russian Federation, for the first time in 40 years.

Is it worth all the effort though? Lunar-sceptic Gerard DeGroot argued earlier this year that all space travel is a waste of money in his book Dark Side of the Moon, claiming “If the Chinese want that worthless rock, so be it.” Yet the political implications of winning the space race are well documented and indeed quite daunting. The credibility of a nation’s political system has long been tied to its ability to project its power on the global stage and beyond. It was this obsession with international prestige that drove the space race during the Cold War and it is no less relevant now. The symbolism of China, an autocratic Communist regime, overtaking the West in space would not be lost on the public. Keeping pace with them, therefore, is not just essential to staying first in space, but also to defending the very values upon which liberal democracy itself relies.

However, if we are to justify the expense of travelling to the Moon again, we need to do more than just land on it. Under the Bush administration, NASA drew up plans to establish a base on the Moon by the mid 2020s, followed by a manned mission to Mars shortly after. How likely this remains under President Obama, whose attitude towards space travel appears distinctly cooler than that of his predecessor, is unclear. Nevertheless, if the exploration of outer space is to have any role in the future of humanity, a base – and eventually a human colony – on the Moon will prove essential.

Sending a man, or woman, to Mars and possibly even the moons of Jupiter and Saturn would require the ability to launch and maintain interstellar vessels on a regular basis. The weak gravity of the Moon and the absence of any weather to delay or derail such missions make it an ideal launch and landing pad. Also, the Moon’s resources are ripe for exploitation, presenting the potential for the development of alternative energy sources that could prove vital in man’s battle against climate change right here on Earth. More importantly, as long as the world’s leading nations are investing their time, effort and money in the colonisation of the Moon and beyond, they’re not investing them in state of the art weapons to be used against each other.

There are many valid arguments against expanding the space programme to be sure, the cost and the myriad of alternative problems that the money could be used to resolve chief amongst them. However, such issues should not dissuade us from reaching for the stars; after all, the decade of the Apollo programme was also the decade of the Great Society. Should sceptics remain unconvinced, they would be wise to recall the words of President John F Kennedy in defence of his ambitious plan to land a man on the Moon: “Why climb the highest mountain? Why, thirty five years ago, fly over the Atlantic? We choose to go to the Moon in this decade, and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills.”