Date: 9 September 2006 23:32:31 BDT

Dear Friend,

Why is Tony Blair clinging to office like a leech?

My guess is that a major reason is that he has a particular bit of unfinished business to deliver.

Blair’s decline started when, delivering on a promise he had made to GW Bush, he took Britain into the Iraqi quagmire, against the wishes of the British people. Two members of his cabinet resigned over this.

The recent revolt in the New “Labour” Party was largely caused by widespread disgust with Blair’s scandalous stance during the July-August Israeli assault on Lebanon, when — once more standing shoulder to shoulder with GW Bush — he refused to call for an immediate ceasfire. For a second time, Blair acted as though he was delivering on a promise he had made to Bush.

Could it be that Blair’s secret promises to Bush have a third item?

What could this item be?

I am speculating, but it seems likely that it has to do with Iran.

On his recent visit to the US, Israel’s former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who has very close relations with the leading neo-cons who make US foreign policy — told his audience at the Hudson Institute that“President Bush is preparing to ditch the United Nations to take on Iran alone”.

He went on to say:

“Largely ignored in the coverage of Mr. Bush’s speech Tuesday on the war on terror, Mr. Netanyahu told his audience more than once, was Mr. Bush’s statement that ‘the world’s free nations will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.’ Not that the ‘United Nations won’t allow’, said Mr. Netanyahu, but that the ‘free nations’ of the world won’t allow. Mr. Netanyahu called it a sign that on the Iranian problem the president was preparing to stop working through the United Nations and instead work with whoever would join him.

“Unfortunately, said Mr. Netanyahu, Britain and America, along with Israel and Iran, are the only countries at the moment that understand what is at stake if Iran acquires the bomb.”

Note the reference to the coalition of the willful, the trio: “Britain and America along with Israel”.

As I said, I am only speculating, but this sounds as though Netanyahu—briefed by his neo-con friends — knows something about Blair’s future stance on Iran that we don’t.

To deliver on this promise, Blair would need to stay in office a while longer.

To read a report on Netanyahu’s speech at the Hudson Institute go to:

www.nysun.com/article/39275?page_no=1&access=862532

Best wishes, MM

Postscript 12/9/06:

On 9 September I circulated a brief message ("Why is Tony Blair clinging to office like a leach?") in which I speculated that "a major reason" for Blair's desperation to stay in office for another year "is that he has a particular bit of unfinished business to deliver", and that this "unfinished business" is something he owes to GW Bush, probably in connection with Iran.

In this context, an article in today's (12 September 2006) Guardian, by the paper's security affairs correspondent, Richard Norton-Taylor is of some interest. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1870269,00.html

Quoting the latest annual survey of the "rarely controversial" London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, Richard Norton-Taylor says:

"The extent to which the prime minister's successor will have to strike a new partnership with Bush, the IISS points out, will depend on the timing of Blair's handover. "The Iraq war is identified in Britain so personally with Blair that the next leader, even if a member of the same party, will be able to leave an enormous amount of domestic political baggage behind," it says. What is surprising, it adds, about both the British electorate and Britain's international partners, is "how little they know about Gordon Brown".