Locked And Loaded, Indeed

"Saudi Arabia should fight their own wars, which they won't, or pay us an absolute fortune to protect them and their great wealth-$ trillion!"

Donald Trump, 31st August 2014.

He was right.

If the Houthis bombed Saudi Arabia, and it is difficult to avoid wishing them all the best of they did, then Iran did at least equip them.

And the main argument against the idea that it might have been the Iranians themselves is that "evidence" that it was them has now been produced by the people whose greatest hits include the following:

• The alleged murder of 100,000 military age males in Kosovo;
• Afghanistan as the source of the attacks against the United States on 11th September 2001;
• The existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and their capacity for deployment within 45 minutes;
• Saddam Hussein's feeding of people into a giant paper shredder, and his attempt to obtain uranium from Niger;
• An imminent genocide in Benghazi, Gaddafi's feeding of Viagra to his soldiers in order to encourage mass rape, and his intention to flee to Venezuela;
• An Iranian nuclear weapons programme; and
• Assad's gassing of Ghouta, as if that were an undisputed fact.

The supporting chorus also includes the believers in Russian hacking of the British referendum and of the American Presidential Election in 2016, among other hallucinations such as that the GRU took a train to Salisbury to smear a nerve agent on the door handle of a man who is still alive, since it cannot stretch to a car, or to a gun, or to making sure that it had in fact killed its target.

In spite of all of that, though, it might have been the Iranians. Or if it was the Houthis, then they were certainly armed by Iran, and probably directed by them, just as there are British Officers in the control room of the heavily British-armed Saudi bombardment of Yemen, which has caused the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world today.

So Iran, a bad regime but a paragon of virtue compared to Saudi Arabia, could do with a bit of reputation management. In Britain, it could achieve that by releasing Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and the other British nationals whom it currently imprisons or detains. After all, it is not as if it needs to stop setting off bombs in Britain. That is the Saudis. But never, ever try to tell that to almost any MP.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration. After nearly 30 years of suggestion, speculation, and even a sort of preparation, I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham. The crowdfunding page is here, and buy the book here. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.