Shropshire Star comment: Any fool can start a war
And so to the brink.
Events over the next few hours and next few days will show who will prevail – the voices urging caution and de-escalation, which include Boris Johnson, and those of more hawkish temperament who could take the Middle East beyond the brink and potentially into a new abyss.
Being successful in the dangerous art of brinkmanship requires an acute sense of where that brink is.
Then there is the question of face, or loss of it. It quickly became clear after the American drone strike which killed the top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani that it required some sort of response from the Iranian regime if it was not to lose face with its own people.
What can be said of the missile attacks on American bases in Iraq which followed is that, if they mark the limit of the Iranian response, a key question is now posed to the administration of Donald Trump, and the world will hold its breath for the answer.
Will the President shrug his shoulders and in a businesslike way see it as quits, and decide that this particular high stakes “deal” is closed?
Or will he and his advisors seize on it as a provocation requiring a further American response, which could spark a chain reaction of tit-for-tat events taking the US and Iran to a war in which the satisfaction of “hitting back” would be fleeting and which would ultimately serve the interests of neither.
The use of drones has been attractive for military commanders as they give them the power to strike without the risk of casualties or serious consequences against low-tech opponents, often in remote, dusty locations, far away from the eyes of the wider world.
However, the Iranian retaliation means that there will need to be a renewed calculation. Iran has shown that it has the missile technology to strike back, and the capability to evade US defences.
That realisation should be a cold shower for the hotheads.
With 2020 only a few days old, an already troubled region is at a perilous crossroads. Any fool can start a war. It takes cool and wise heads not to do so.
