Simon Jenkins: the intellectual runny nose of the British establishment.

I read Simon Jenkins' article about Iran after hearing about it in various places. He's such an inveterate con(descension) artist I knew what to expect. With Jenkins you can expect sub-BBC rumination, vacuous high-sounding intellectual abstraction, and lists of undistinguished assumptions. You end up feeling sorry for the poor deluded sod. And that's how it was.


Jenkins gets off the mark in his opposition to anti-Iran action 'The very talk of it - macho phrases about "all options open" - suggests an international community so crazed with video game enforcement as to have lost the power of coherent thought.'

This is absurd, when as he usually has no difficulty in pointing out, the US has been losing real lives in Iraq next door. One moment he doesn't like on the ground movements, next it's video-game enforcement he's down upon. It also seems that he thinks the non-macho thing (the right thing, natch), would be to have no discussion of options, for there are none.

Next up, Jenkins shows why he's one of Britain's foremost black columnists when he says:

'Iran is a serious country, not another two-bit post-imperial rogue waiting to be slapped about the head by a white man.'

No, they're waiting for a token white figurehead to come and lick their arses, after which they'll treat them the way they treat other objects of their affection, like their women.

One senses the baleful ghost-writing of Beeb hack John Simpson here:

'Iranian politics are as complex and sophisticated as any I have observed around the world.'

er, evidence?

And Iran, serious? What does Jenkins mean by that? They're serious about only one thing- nuclear weapons- and about the rest they're completely nutty, from stoning unfaithful women to proclaiming their intent to uproot anglo-saxon culture everywhere.

Next up is such a classic piece of liberal piffle it needs posting in full:

'All the following statements about Iran are true. There are powerful Iranians who want to build a nuclear bomb. There are powerful ones who do not. There are people in Iran who would like Israel to disappear. There are people who would not. There are people who would like Islamist rule. There are people who would not. There are people who long for some idiot western politician to declare war on them. There are people appalled at the prospect. The only question for western strategists is which of these people they want to help.'

He seems to be saying that anything we say about Iran is true. Well, that certainly makes intel a lot easier. But his conclusion is that we throw some clumsy gestures into this melange. No distinctions, just vague good intentions required, and no action.

I prefer to use some discrimination, and say that it's obvious the nutters are in charge in Iran, and they're tightening their grip; moreover, the anti-western rhetoric is not to appeal to the beast within the Iranian people, but to intimidate the pro-western ones into believing that the grip of the hardline is iron-like, and there is no help coming from the West. It's the inactivity of the West in the face of this that makes such a line plausible.

Moving on we find some piffle about nuclear proliferation. The question is this: is Iran actually threatened by any nation with regard to nuclear weapons. Answer, unequivocally, no- unless they unleash mass destruction themselves. Nukes are just the ultimate in insurance policies for the Iranian high-wire Islamofascist playboys.

But lacking an argument, what's a girl to do but lie? Jenkins is no exception. He knows this is wrong, but that his Beeb-o-GUardianista readers will lap it up:

'But given the inaccuracy of American bombers, the death and destruction caused to Iran's cities would be a gift to anti-western extremists and have every world terrorist reporting for duty.'

Don't you love the 'given' here? So lazy.

Jenkins tries to bolster his argument by saying that the current President of Iran is not secure, and that the Islamic revolution has been a failure. As for the former point, Ahmadinejad is working on that one. As to the latter, Ahmadinejad agrees with Jenkins, and that's why he's working to bring home the revolution.

All of which leaves Jenkins ploughing the wrong way down shitcreek with only his hands for paddles.