'"The voices calling for Assad's departure grow louder every time they refuse to involve themselves militarily in the overthrow of the same man!'"

"... Still, it was good to be reassured that "we are not favouring the idea of anybody attacking Iran at the moment". Maybe later, then. Or maybe after President Assad eventually falls, thus depriving Iran of its only – and valuable – ally in the Middle East. Which is, I suspect, what a lot of the roaring and raging against Assad is all about. Get rid of Assad and you cut out part of Iran's heart – though whether that will induce the crackpot Ahmadinejad to turn his nuclear plants into baby-milk factories is another matter. For here's the rub. The mighty voices calling for Assad's departure grow louder every time they refuse to involve themselves militarily in the overthrow of the same man. The more they promise not to "do a Nato" on Syria – every time they claim there can be no "no-fly" zones over Syria – they get angrier and angrier at Assad. Why doesn't he just go off to retirement in Turkey, end the theatre once and for all, and stop embarrassing us all?

Needless to say, Hague-Hague waffles on and on about Syria, too, while presumably not "favouring the idea of anybody attacking Syria at the moment". And this is a real stinker for the Foreign Secretary. He was rightly denouncing the killing of Marie Colvin this week – I last saw her in the final, joyous days of the Egyptian revolution, heading, as usual, towards the crack of tear-gas grenades – but hundreds of other innocent human beings have been cruelly killed in Syria without so much as a whisper from Hague-Hague. And some of these were killed by the armed opposition to Assad ... 

No, we are not going to involve ourselves in Syria, thank you very much. Because the new Cold War in the region which Hague was blathering on about has already started over Syria, not Iran. The Russians are lined up against us there, supporting Assad and denouncing us. Just what reaction Putin expects from any Assad replacement is a mystery. Nor will a "new" Syria necessarily be the pro-Western democracy that Hague-Hague and others would like to see..."