Rees: "Israel has a secret and illegal nuclear weapons arsenal of perhaps 200 warheads. It is not open to any international inspection. It is not part of any international treaty about nuclear weapons.
"Iran has never invaded even one of its neighbours in hundreds of years of history. Israel has invaded every single one of the neighbours which border it. It is in breach of more UN resolutions than Saddam Hussein's Iraq was. If we are talking about violent intent towards one's neighbours, I think we should be concerned about Israel's nuclear weapons programme and not be so concerned about a programme which might at some point, if the intelligence is right about WMD - and haven't we heard that one before - only might be right about Iran.
"What we are absolutely sure about now because it was carried in your news report earlier, is that the bombing has now, according to the IAEA, breached the containment vessel for nuclear material in Iran. That is an immediate danger which wasn't there before America entered this war, with the aims of both the Israeli military operation and according to Pres Trump's tweets, that regime change is a good idea. We are back into a land that we have been in before, with Afghanistan, with Iraq, with Libya and which have proved to be absolutely disastrous on every single occasion. Perhaps worse than those cases, the so called 'Rules Based International Order', probably more observed by weaker states than stronger ones in the past, is now in shreds. Why should anyone - China, Russia or anybody abide by a rules-based international order now if all that matters is that you've got a big bomb and can drop it on someone - hey why not?
"Iran was part of an agreement to control their uranium enrichment and Donald Trump tore that agreement up in his first presidency. His own Secretary of State, weeks ago made a statement that the Iranians were nowhere near getting a nuclear weapon and this was the view of the USA security establishment that the Iranians were "nowhere near a nuclear bomb". We have all been through these propaganda barrages before. We all remember the dodgy dossier. We all remember what was said about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Just swallowing whole this kind of stuff is not good enough.
"In Vietnam it was said, in the beginning, that we were only sending advisers there, the American told us. Mission creep is part of war. If the Iranians follow through with the suggestion of their Parliament that they close the Straits of Hormuz and oil prices jump by some 15% as is predicted, I absolutely guarantee that we will have American spokespeople on the media saying, "Oh well we didn't want to go there but look what the Iranians have done. Now we will have to respond to that. If they hit an American base in the Middle East, oh it was only going to be a one-off but now we will have to have a long military engagement. If you can't see that coming you can't see very much coming, I'm afraid."
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