Melanie Phillips: Britain Impotently Warns Iran of 'Serious Consequences'

She's the best.

See, "Hague shakes his puny fist in the thirty years' invisible war":

For some thirty years, Britain and the west have experienced war waged upon them by Iran – but fantastically, have refused to acknowledge this fact. They refused to fight back. They refused therefore also to acknowledge what has been crystal clear for at least the past two decades: that it was never going to be a choice between war or peace with Iran. It was always going to be a choice between fighting that war sooner, when Iran was weaker and the west had more chance of minimising the fall-out, and fighting that war later, when Iran would be much stronger -- and possibly even a nuclear power -- and when the consequences for the west would be that much more terrible.

What the west refused to grasp was that there was never any chance of the Iranian regime seeing sense. That’s because what drives its dominant members at least is not conventional political impulse but an apocalyptic messianism. That means they actively seek to bring about a conflagration -- even if this consumes much of Iran -- since they believe that this apocalypse will prompt the return to earth of a religious messiah figure. They actually want to bring about the end of the world. But the west just didn’t take any of this remotely seriously.

The result has been catastrophic for the world. Iran has been outwitting the west at every turn, aided immeasurably by an American President who extended to these genocidal fanatics the hand of friendship while smashing his fist down on their principal prospective victim, Israel. As a result, Iran has enormously extended its power in the region and become seen there – disastrously -- as the strong horse which must be ridden, while the once-mighty US has become the enfeebled nag that is no longer prepared even to defend itself, let alone anyone else.

RTWT.