I love contemplating my navel. I’m a ‘liberal’. I believe in negotiated peace in all worlds, wherever possible. And I’m a believer of ‘talking’.

Therefore I am the problem. Because I’m symptomatic of the British malaise, exemplified beautifully by our Prime Minister, in which problems are addressed by navel contemplation, by wishing for unrealistic outcomes, by assuming that everyone in the world can be negotiated with and worst of all, the presumption that ‘good will prevail’. But only after 13 judges have contemplated the ‘legal framework’.

That’s what we do. We talk. We debate. We have ‘conversations’. And nothing ever gets resolved.

So when Israel swore to eliminate Hamas from Gaza, everyone was in complete agreement. In theory. And in that theory, there was some kind of ‘negotiated settlement’, possibly? Or invitations to leave? Maybe force a few out but obviously as long as there was NO collateral damage. As I kept saying during the Gaza demolition: THIS IS WHAT DESTROYING HAMAS LOOKS LIKE.

Israel doesn’t do navel contemplation. It’s too small, too sensitive, too vulnerable. It can’t afford to make stupid presumptions of ‘good in all people’, when those people have just raped, tortured and murdered 1250 innocent civilians. So it ‘cuts to the chase’. And gets the job done. It’s not pretty, it’s certainly not popular, but they don’t care if it protects their population.

And now we have the ‘we need regime change in Iran but not ‘the American/Israeli way’’ brigade. This takes naivety way beyond normal levels of stupidity and elevates it to the ridiculous. The Iranian people tried the normal route of protesting, back in January, and 5000 of them were murdered, 50,000 still remain in jail. Will they ever be seen again? Possibly not if the IRGC are still in charge.

Regime change HAS to come from within. But getting rid of the old one, in this instance, HAD to come from without. From above. From outside. Because they would never otherwise go. Tyrannical rulers don’t just ‘leave’ because lots of people hate them. THIS IS WHAT REGIME CHANGE LOOKS LIKE. Or ‘starts like’ in this instance.

The Iranian people, the good ones, the civilised ones, do not want to ban religion. They want democracy. In which everyone is free to practice whatever devotion they wish. But aren’t forced to adhere to certain levels of a belief system they don’t wish to partake in. ‘The Regime’ forced an extreme form of Shia Islam on everybody. A new regime won’t remove the mosques, the imams, the beliefs. It will leave them to choice. And others so choosing will be allowed to listen to pop music, for instance. Wear clothes that a bunch of state-employed thugs might deem ‘immodest’. Women will get the freedoms that all women should be allowed. Education. Driving. LIVING.

I’m looking forward to this weekend’s protests over here. The ‘Free Palestine’ brigade now have another reason to hate and blame Israel (because these people never marched for any other world issue, regardless of how many ‘innocent civilians’ were dying) and America. So they’ll change their banners to ‘Free Iran’. But they won’t mean that phrase like we all mean it. We want to free the Iranian people. They want to free Iran from American and Israeli intervention, presumably consigning it to another few generations of horror and repression. And Zac Polanski will be leading it.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx