Pushbike

There's only one Peter Hitchens:

All of a sudden, the sad cargoes of coffins from Afghanistan are increasing again.

I had thought that the Government, ashamed of this pointless war, had told the Army to keep its men safe from danger until they could pull them out. Plainly I was wrong. These new deaths are even more intolerable, now that our defeat has already been announced.

But it is worse than that. We seem to be preparing ourselves for yet another war – this time in Iran.

How crass. Iran’s nuclear programme is a game. Iranian technology would have difficulty in delivering a pizza, let alone an H-bomb. It is aimed at riling silly, ignorant warmongers in the West, like our Foreign Secretary, William Hague, pictured. I seem to remember Mr Hague once mocking people who threatened more than they could deliver with the telling Texan phrase ‘Big hat, no cattle’.

Given that the Coalition has reduced our Armed Forces to little more than a couple of cabin cruisers, an old pushbike and a spotter plane, doesn’t he think this might now apply to him?

The mullahs who rule in Tehran are hugely unpopular with Iran’s young, enlightened and civilised people.

But if they can claim that they are standing up for their country against foreign interference, they can shore up their support. It’s a very old trick, but it still works.

Britain should be especially careful about poking its snout into Iran. Every educated Persian still knows about and resents MI6’s idiotic and short-sighted overthrow of the popular Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. It was this greedy and lawless action that led in the end to the 1979 revolution which put the ayatollahs in power.

We should be very modest and cautious in our dealings with this proud and ancient people. And we have sent quite enough soldiers to their deaths in dubious interventions in the past ten years.

A period of silence from Mr Hague would be welcome.