Drift into war with Iran out of control, says UN

Mohamed El Baradei, the UN's chief weapons inspector, has warned against the use of force against Iran in what has been described as an attempt to halt an "out of control" drift to war by the United States.

"I would not talk about any use of force," Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters at the International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters in Vienna. "There are rules on how to use force, and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons."

Baradei makes a very valid point, and it is simply astonishing that the Cheney warmongers are once again being allowed to make their war noises without anyone questioning, not only the validity of their claims, but the very notion of attacking Iran without a United Nations mandate.

These same people made the claim that they "did not need a permission slip" to protect US interests before, and they illegally invaded Iraq on grounds that turned out to be totally false.

The noises being made regarding Iran are exactly the same as the noises that we heard before the Iraq invasion.

There has been a string of reports out of Washington that the Bush administration is running out of patience with diplomacy and is intensifying its plans for air strikes as a means of halting Iran's disputed nuclear programme.

UN officials said Mr ElBaradei, an Egyptian diplomat who was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2005, was attempting to slow down what seemed to be an accelerating march to war.

"There's a strategic reason for doing these things," one official said. "He really is alarmed. He sees this thing going out of control. The feeling around here is that this looks like the run-up to the Iraq war."

Let's be clear here. Neither the US nor Israel have any right under international law to bomb any Iranian facility, and yet the recent Israeli sortie over Syria was hailed as something that the US was "happy" with as it sent a warning to both Syria and Iran that Israel could bomb them at will.

El Baradei is simply stating what has been discussed here and many other places.

There is no secret that the Cheney camp, despite the disaster in Iraq, has plans to also launch a series of air strikes against Iran. And, if Cheney has his way, this will be done with no consultation with the UN.

The Bush administration have been ripping up international law since the first day they took office, and el Baradei does well to remind us that what is being proposed is illegal.

As I spoke of yesterday, the new French President is making similar noises to the US, apparently oblivious to the fact that the position of his French predecessor turned out to be the right one, despite the attacks he came under from this American administration.

Last month, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, sparked a heated political debate in Paris when he called the Iranian stand-off "the greatest crisis" of current times, saying the world had "a catastrophic alternative: an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran".

Following Mr Kouchner's comments, Tehran yesterday denounced France's stance on the nuclear issue, which has toughened since Mr Sarkozy's election in May. Iran's state-owned news agency IRNA published an editorial accusing Paris of "extremism" and pandering to Washington. "The new occupants of the Elysée want to copy the White House," it said, accusing Mr Sarkozy of taking on "an American skin".

All of this macho talk of war ignores the fact that the UN has passed no resolution allowing war.

Leaving aside the fact that any attack on Iran would have disastrous consequences for the US in the Middle East, the simple fact is that any attack on Iran would, at the moment - without a UN mandate - simply be illegal.

Cheney has attempted to get around this by claiming that any American air strikes would not be an act of war, an astonishing claim which simply beggars belief.

But once again we find ourselves facing the prospect of war. A war for which no valid reasons have been given, and - more importantly - a war on which United Nations have not been consulted.

Baradei will have infuriated them by saying what he has said, but what he is saying is right.

There is no need for any talk about military action and the new French President does no-one any favours by parroting the Washington line in the way that he has been doing.

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