Defence in the World

Part of Points of Order – in the House of Commons at 1:42 pm on 1 February 2007.

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Photo of Liam Fox Liam Fox Shadow Secretary of State for Defence 1:42, 1 February 2007

The situation may not be as simple as the right hon. Gentleman portrays it when we consider what President Ahmadinejad has said—his open declaration that he wants to

"wipe Israel off the map".

That attitude is not prevalent in any other nuclear weapons state. The right hon. Gentleman may correct me, but I know of no such state that has openly said it wants to use its nuclear arsenal in an aggressive way. The Iranian regime wants to do that. In the UK we are discussing the next generation of our nuclear deterrent, but with fewer warheads than we have at present. We are within the letter and the spirit of the non-proliferation treaty.

Iran, too, has obligations under the treaty. We cannot accept one country breaking out of the treaty—especially when it has a regime such as the current one in Iran—and do nothing about it. Iran is threatening not only to possess nuclear weapons, but, for the first time, designating the target for them. That is an extraordinarily disturbing development.

Annotations

Leigh Storey
Posted on 5 Feb 2007 4:24 pm (Report this annotation)

Kindly get your facts straight and stop propagating misinformation Mr Fox. I was under the impression that speaking untruths in the House of Commons was prohibited. Here is the translation for your information...

"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time".

Word by word translation:

Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from).


http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&a...

Adam Field
Posted on 6 Feb 2007 12:04 pm (Report this annotation)

I can see a variation in wiping off the map and vanishing from the pages of time but don't they equate to the same thing?

Aren't they basically saying it would be better if the Israeli state ceased to exist?

Leigh Storey
Posted on 7 Feb 2007 1:55 pm (Report this annotation)

Is near enough good enough when looking for a pretext for an attack? I think the key difference is the 'regime' to 'Israel' misquote - one refers to a government the other refers to a country. Propaganda is a dangerous tool in the hands of warmongers.

Mark Bestford
Posted on 7 Feb 2007 2:11 pm (Report this annotation)

What must also be taken into account is that Jerusalem is is actually split in two. East Jerusalem is "occupied" by Israel. You can read a lot of context into what is being said but at the end of the day one thing goes without saying. Any invasion of Iran by the west would be a disaster. The invasion of Iraq was a partial success purely because the majority of the population were against Saddam. The method of invasion with it's indiscriminate bombing of civilian and conscripted troops did nothing to endear the west to the Iraqi people. An invasion of Iran however would be condemned by the entire world and would do nothing to change the politics of Iran. If anything it will strengthen Iran against the west. Troops in Iran would be fighting the entire population and not just a handful of hardliners. Moreover it will set an even more dangerous precedent amongst hardline governments towards the gaining of WMD to protect themselves from the west.