Hague says Brown has "simultaneously disappointed the Americans, upset the Europeans and handed Iran a publicity coup'

At the Joint Press Conference with President Bush on Monday, Gordon Brown announced that:

"Today Britain will urge Europe and Europe will agree to take further sanctions against Iran. First of all, we will take action today that will freeze the overseas assets of the biggest bank in Iran, the bank Melli. And second, action will start today for a new phase of sanctions on oil and gas.”

But no action has been taken by the EU or by Britain to freeze the assets of Bank Melli or impose sanctions on Iranian oil and gas. Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague asked Miliband to explain this in the Commons today:

"The steps the Prime Minister announced have not been taken. According to press reports, the EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, explicitly denied that any agreement on sanctions had been reached.

The Financial Times today points out that Bank Melli is working in exactly the same way today as it worked yesterday. Its offices in London are open, it can use its assets in whatever way it likes, and indeed may be in the process of moving a lot of them to Dubai.

The FT also quotes a US diplomat who said that Mr Brown was ‘wrong’. ‘He made an incorrect statement’. ‘The problem is that the US delegation and the US press believed him’. He said ‘On the scale of diplomatic blunders, this is a seven out of 10’.

The Iranian Foreign Minister, quoted in the Iranian press today, said that “The European officials have rejected Brown’s statements and have announced that there is no new decision for intensifying sanctions against Iran.

There may be an explanation for these event of which the public is not aware. However the government appears to have simultaneously disappointed the Americans, upset the Europeans and handed Iran a publicity coup.”

If it is indeed the case, the Government will have taken the conduct of the foreign policy of this country to a whole new level of blundering incompetence. We expect a full explanation about what has happened, and I will be writing to the Foreign Secretary today to seek this."

Comments

[Mark Williams]

Before he made this statement, did he speak to Shell & BP, both of which have substantial investments in Iran?

[Ulster Tory]

In the immortal words of Jilted John, "Gordon is a Moron"...

[Mr Angry]

Well what did anyone expect with our European "partners" patently unwilling to take any substantive steps against Iran.

[Adam McNestrie]

Britain’s foreign policy is being undermined by an unwillingness to acknowledge the full force of an uncomfortable truth: Britain does not have the power to command the foreign policy outcomes that it considers desperately important. The primary baleful consequence is the default decision to continue to fight counter-insurgent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We have adopted a policy of wait-and-see or occupy-and-hope, an aimless watching brief, whilst we wait for a deus ex machina to deliver us from our folly. The government’s hope of progress, of “success” is so inane because if one thinks imagines five years time, ten years, twenty – it isn’t clear how any of the fundamentals of the stalemate are going to have changed. Except the atrophy of the western will to maintain these occupations.

We remain in both countries because we don’t have the strength to accept that what we have been trying to do is impossible. We are there because things have not become bad enough, the enterprise has not worn itself out sufficiently, for us to admit that it is beyond us. Before we can conscience withdrawal we have to make sure that we have atoned for our hubris through noble suffering.

The second baleful consequence is a foreign policy that looks inward, not outwards – one which aims to assuage our howling consciences, rather than effecting desired outcomes. The combination of a collection of consciences quickened by the globalised media and British impotence reduces much of foreign policy discussion to the elaboration of empty pieties. Amongst this politics of the conscience-ache, realist discussions of power and national interest are completely absent; as is a clear-headed appraisal of the potentialities (as well as disadvantages) of American power.

Read more at my blog, just who the hell are we?, at:
http://adammcnestrie.wordpress.com/

[Dontmakemelaugh]

Read more at my blog, just who the hell are we?, at:
http://adammcnestrie.wordpress.com/

Posted by: Adam McNestrie | Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 22:11

I wouldn't go anywhere near your blog - you reek of appeasing defeatism (would you perchance be employed by the BBC?)

Defeat in Afghanistan or Iraq is not up for negotiation. Do you think those terrorists who hate the west and all it stands for are going to go away if we leave and come home? Its as simple as that, eh? Are we then all going to live happily ever after? I am afraid not, especially with the Iran mullahs suspected of supplying the armourery.

In today's Times, in the morning online edition, Sarkozy is quoted as saying the the biggest threat to France was terrorism (that quote has now disappeared); he is now going to rejoin Nato in a meaningful way and reorganise French defences. Even Paddy Ashdown recognises the dire situation that would acrue if we left Afghanistan to the Taleban and the effect that would have on Pakistan.

Read your blog? It is bad enough listening to the BBC, but thanks for the offer - I dont think.

[Dontmakemelaugh]

Read more at my blog, just who the hell are we?, at:
http://adammcnestrie.wordpress.com/

Posted by: Adam McNestrie | Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 22:11

I wouldn't go anywhere near your blog - you reek of appeasing defeatism (would you perchance be employed by the BBC?)

Defeat in Afghanistan or Iraq is not up for negotiation. Do you think those terrorists who hate the west and all it stands for are going to go away if we leave and come home? Its as simple as that, eh? Are we then all going to live happily ever after? I am afraid not, especially with the Iran mullahs suspected of supplying the armourery.

In today's Times, in the morning online edition, Sarkozy is quoted as saying the the biggest threat to France was terrorism (that quote has now disappeared); he is now going to rejoin Nato in a meaningful way and reorganise French defences. Even Paddy Ashdown recognises the dire situation that would acrue if we left Afghanistan to the Taleban and the effect that would have on Pakistan.

Read your blog? It is bad enough listening to the BBC, but thanks for the offer - I dont think.

[Dontmakemelaugh]

Apologises for the double post. Not quite sure how it happened?

[Dontmakemelaugh]

"In today's Times, in the morning online edition, Sarkozy is quoted as saying the the biggest threat to France was terrorism (that quote has now disappeared)".

I thought I read the quote in the Times - it was actually in the Telegraph.

The BBC this morning on Radio 5 was doing its best to present the case for withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Colonel Mike Dewar stated that there are 47 countries involved in Afghanistan, not just Britain, and we should stay involved.
The ranter, (he tried to talk over Mike Dewar) Peter Hitchens, provided the opposition. He came up with the gem that "Nato should have been disbanded after the collapse of the Soviet Union".
No wonder the BBC is always keen to have him on their pacifist programmes.

[Clifford Goodman]

For heavens sake stop burbling on about terrorism, the only terrorists up to date are the Israeli's and Americans,and I do not refer to the man in the street whether he be American or Israeli.
I refer to the gangsters who go to make up both administrations with the full assistance of their criminal bankers and the Illuminati.
The destruction of the WTC,and the attack on the Pentagon plus the the 7/7 London bombings were all inside jobs, and it is doubtful if an organisation such as Al, Quaeda ever existed.