There has been considerable discussion concerning changes in the British stance over possible military action against Iran. This has been fuelled by a report in the Sunday edition of the Scotsman:
TONY Blair has told George Bush that Britain cannot offer military support to any strike on Iran, regardless of whether the move wins the backing of the international community, government sources claimed yesterday.
Amid increasing tension over Tehran's attempts to develop a military nuclear capacity, the Prime Minister has laid bare the limits of his support for President Bush, who is believed to be considering an assault on Iran, Foreign Office sources revealed.
.....But, in the midst of international opposition to a pre-emptive strike on Tehran, and Britain's military commitments around the world, the government maintains it cannot contribute to a military assault. "We will support the diplomatic moves, at best," a Foreign Office source told Scotland on Sunday. "But we cannot commit our own resources to a military strike."
Suskind picked up this interesting story in a diary on DKos the same day. It prompted him to say:
While George Bush pledges allegiance to his Secretary of Defense his British poodle gets away from him. Blair's non-support for a pre-emptive strike against Iran, whose WMD capability is greater now than was Iraq's three years ago throws open the question:
When will Britain withdraw its troops from Iraq?
What if they threw a war and nobody came???.....
Clearly, if this unattributed story marked a change in the relationship between Blair and Bush it was of real significance and Suskind was right to draw our attention to it.
By Monday, Jerome a Paris had taken the story a stage further in a recommended diary entitled Paranoia: hit piece on Blair in WaPo as he refuses war in Iran.
Wrongly, he assigns the statement to the Prime Minister and explains that "Blair's declaration that he would refuse any military action is pretty explicit".
The diary linked to an article in the Washington Post headlined "Britons Feeling 'Tired of Tony" and queried if it was acting as a shill for the White House in attacking Blair as payback for the apparent withdrawal of support. Jerome writes: "For the WaPo to have a story on the topic once in a while is naturally not strange, but both the timing, and the very title ("tired of Tony") cannot but raise suspicions in the current context of unrelenting support of the WaPo for the Bush administration, and the build up of the noise machine around Iran."
This speculation seemed too great a stretch. It was Detlef who spotted the real significance of the story and asked:
What about the phrase "...President Bush, who is believed to be considering an assault on Iran, Foreign Office sources revealed."?
Isn´t "considering an assault" according to British sources a bit more "real" than "all options are on the table" (paraphrasing Rice)?
Seems to me that this is at least partly a confirmation of Hersh and his article. Not of the possible use of tactical nukes of course but of extensive planning for an air strike right now.
The key to the whole issue was this question regarding a possible change in policy by the British government.
eMedia News Agency, the new citizen journalist operation that has based itself at ePluribus Media, spoke to the press office of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office today on your behalf to seek clarification on this question. Their spokesman said that he had no knowledge of the source of the story. The position of the UK government had not changed since that expressed in the Foreign Secretary's statement of April 9th in which he had said that the idea of military action was "inconceivable".
After quoting the Prime Minister's press briefing a day later at which the words "military action was not on anybody's agenda" the spokesman was asked if the "anybody" applied to all allied countries. The reply was emphatic that the reference was solely on behalf the Departments of State of the UK government.
At the same time as this discussion was taking place between eMedia News Agency and the Foreign Office, a reporter raised the same question with the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman (PMOS) at a briefing that was supposed to be concerned with developments in the National Health Service. The response was not dissimilar:
Put that there had been reports over the weekend that the Prime Minister had told President Bush that if there was any military action against Iran, then the UK would not participate, the PMOS said that he was not aware of the report, therefore he would not comment on any report that he had not read. "We had said consistently, as indeed had the White House, that the approach we were trying to take was a diplomatic one."
Meanwhile, back in the States, George Bush was not so reluctant to envision the "inconceivable". At his own press conference today he stated clearly:
The president's comment that "all options are on the table" came after a reporter asked whether, when Mr. Bush used those words previously, he meant to include the possibility of a nuclear strike.
"All options are on the table," Mr. Bush replied plainly, before adding, "We want to solve this issue diplomatically." The phrase has become a commonplace of administration officials since last summer in describing concerns about Iran.
ANALYSIS & COMMENT
The first thing that needs to be said is that there is no sense from the discussion with the Foreign Office spokesman of any shift in UK policy in relation to Iran nor of a change in relationships with the White House.
Many have read too much significance into the Scotsman story and that may be partly due to the way that it is written. If the unnamed source is correct, it would be perfectly understandable to the White House that, with the heavy commitments of the UK in Iraq and the increasing commitments in Afghanistan, Blair is simply unable to offer additional troops for any further possible military action. This is a far cry from saying that it specifically chooses not to support the United States.
Will some other form of support be available? The UK government is dealing with this question as it dealt with it in the run up to Iraq. It refuses to think publicly that far ahead. It is "inconceivable". Yes, maybe, until such time as it has to be conceived.That will be the time for decision.
Equally understandable to the White House will be that British rhetoric on the matter of Iran has to take into account the weakness of Blair's current position and the strength of opposition that exists amongst his own parliamentarians as well as the British public.
So, no rift at present between George Bush and Blair, no conspiracy involving hit pieces against Blair in the Washington Post and no great significance in the Scotsman article.
Far more significant was the statement by Bush today. How much of it, particularly the refusal to deny the nuclear strike option, is bluff? On this we can all speculate, but if it is bluff then we need to recall, in similar circumstances, MacMillan's words to Kennedy: "A show of strength is like a proposal of marriage - there is always a danger that it will be accepted".
Cross posted from ePluribus Media