As a left-leaning agnostic (shock, horror), I'm deeply suspicious of the motives behind the New Right Christianity of the Bush/Blair axis. In fact they, as well as the more obviously insane Islamic fundamentalists, have scared the hell out of me.

I can't speak for the US, but this country's in a right pickle. We have a long and enviable record of giving asylum to refugees from parts of the world that others deemed too hot to handle eg French radicals during the siege of Paris in the 1870's and anarchists/communists from Tsarist Russia a hundred years ago, with no ill effects to the UK.

Our more recent immigrant communities (granted post-Empire citizenship) have (unlike their counterparts in France) been encouraged to keep their cultural identity, in the implicit understanding that Britian benefits from the increase in diversity. Notwithstanding some problems with racial tension, on the whole this has worked very well. Until recently.

Until last year my parents had lived in Coventry, one of our most deprived cities, for 10 years or so. It's a city with a very large Muslim community. The reason they felt unable to stay there any longer was that my step-mother finally grew sick of being called a "whore" in the street by young Muslim children, who had obviously been affected by the indoctrination of hateful anti-West Imams in the local mosque.

I was, and still am, shocked that this is happening in the UK. It seems as though our innate liberalism may be getting the better of us.

IMO religious fundamentalism is the preserve of people who want a simplistic black and white value system. It has no place in the modern world, hence the antagonism expressed by Muslim fundamentalists to Western values, and by some Christian fundamentalists to other cultures.

Several thoughts on everyone's comments.

- I asked the question what would you do if you were the President or PM? This really has little to do with Bush's or Blair's politics. Say you hate Bush, fine, then answer the question if you favorite Democrat was in office. However, while many of you answered the question, many did not. It's tough isn't it? We should all be mindful of such difficulties when we (especially the press) are prone to jump to conclusions.

-Make no mistake, Iran is not trying to develop civilian nuclear facilities. I won't bore you with the litany of details, but their breaking of seals and today refusing IAEA inspectors is a clear sign of weaponization.

-Despite what history professors or the NY Times says, the UN is pretty much helpless to stop such things like proliferation. The structure of the Security Council with vetoes virtually guarantees that no action will be taken. There is a long history of the UN being unable to prevent such things. If you want the UN to try diplomacy you basically guarantee that Iran gets nulcear weapons because the UN will take years trying diplomacy (allowing Iran precious development time), and history shows that UN diplomacy has very little chance of working (it hasn't so far b/c the IAEA is bascially a UN arm). UN = guaranteed nucs for Iran

-The really, really important point is not how dangerous Iran will be if it has nuclear weapons. It's how dangerous Al Queda will be. Iran will give access directly or indirectly to Al Queda if it has nuclear arms. Would Iran launch a nuclear attack? Probably not. Would they conveniently allow Al Queda operatives to "steal" weaponized fissile material that they could later use? Sure. Why not? They're not liable, and in this environment where everyone is hypercritical of the US, Iran might not even face retaliation.

I think it's a tough question, Tim, but to some extent the hands of Bush and (probably even more so) Blair are tied by having lied, or "mislead", however you slice it, about Iraq (I wasn't against invading Iraq to remove Saddam, personally, but I do disagree with elected leaders basically lying to the country as a whole to get the job done.). Because the shakedown has been a very bloody and unpopular war, and a whole raft of terrible press and political opposition for both leaders, it's really restricted their ability to deal with a country that actually poses a genuine potential threat as a known supporter of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism (i.e. Iran) when that threat arises through the means of the re-initialisation of their nuclear programme.

So,without going into too much waffly detail, my thoughts are:

1) A country with one of the largest and most plentiful supplies of oil on the face of the world doesn't really require nuclear power.

2) Despite the fact they are considered something of a "rogue state", Iran's leaders aren't entirely insensitive to the international picture, in terms of instinct to survive. The chances of a direct nuclear attack would be minimal, even if they were eventually able to create an atom bomb (which would be basically impossible to do without the whole world knowing about it).

3) So the big danger comes from the fact that the Iranian regime and much of the political landscape in that country is supportive of fundamentalist, jihadist islamic terrorism. And, of course, the fact that nuclear material could fall into the hands of such groups.

4) Perhaps reassuringly, atomic weapons are VERY difficult and technical to develop and build. It took Pakistan and India 20 years to develop the A-bomb, and that was without the political instability and potential aggression from the west that Iran would risk by undergoing similar development. Also, making nuclear weapons requires technical knowledge that may well not be present in Iran, so they'd probably need some external help. Furthermore, atomic bombs require very refined weapons-grade plutonium, and manufacturing that is something that would be spotted (or at least inferred) by espionage from satellites etc. It would be very hard for Iran to develop anything weapons-based on the quiet. The "dirty bomb", oft-quoted potential terrorist threat (which uses non-weapons grade uranium or other isotopes in a conventional explosive device) is not actually a nuclear fission device and wouldn't be half as damagin as you think. Even if a terrorist group did get hold of a large quantity of uranium, and managed to get it into somewhere like NYC or London (which would be difficult), the damage caused by detonating such a device wouldn't be that great compared to regular explosives. I think it's reckoned the death toll would be in the dozens, or perhaps hundreds, from such a weapon, and not the apocalyptic scenario you'd get from a nuke. Still dreadful, of course, but not quite "the sum of all fears". So as long as we can identify and prevent Iran from developing a full-blown fission device (which, as I've suggested, probably shouldn't be THAT hard for us to do), it might not be as much a threat as you'd think. I hope. Gulp....

5) We (the UK) and the US would have a lot more leverage on a military level if (and it is an "if") this situation escalates if we hadn't lied and fabricated unproven threats to invade a basically non-threatening country with an admittedly tyrannical regime. Should've considered that a couple of years ago, really...

When Iran built alot of their nuclear facalities they built them around civilians. The reason for this is obvious they don't care much if a few people die from accidents. But imagine the position this places any county in that wants to stirke at these facalties. On the plus side we have alot of military assets in the area already and a whole lot of well trained pilots who are quite capable. As for the international community if things keep playing out they way it seems they will I would imagine it will be the US with the full backing of Europe that takes these facalties out.