Peace or the Pipeline - War with Syria or Iran?

With the imminent safety of the British Sunday Times photographer Paul Conroy and the FCO’s necessitated use of the Syrian opposition and Free Syria Army fighters to insure his safe return, it is time to consider the government’s options regarding peace and stability in the Middle East.

It is becoming increasingly more likely that we will see Western troop’s yomping through the desert in the next 18 to36 months. But there appears to be two very different, some would say juxtaposed reasons for such a massive reversal of the government’s policy, ether way we can only fight one war – As fighting both would completely destabilise the middle east.

So firstly we have the Syrian question, how long can the western world ignore the massacres of innocent civilians authorised and implemented by a dictator who has no wish to stop, negotiate or compromise. Mr Conroy’s return will no doubt be a full and thorough test of the morality involved in none-intervention, it will be followed by a deep and explicit retelling of the horrors he has faced whilst in Syria and the western world will no doubt recoil at the telling of his experiences. As his first hand reports lead the news agenda in the coming weeks each and every one of us will be forced to stop and make moral account.

Syria is an issue of morality and issue of hart rather than mind, we as the British public will in all likelihood no longer stand for Mr al-Assad’s purge. But will the morality of the British public be enough to take the west to war?

This is the real question, the west will go to war but Syria as the moral conflict can not be the conflict of our generation, instead look further to the east. As long as Iran and Mr Ahmadinejad continue their posturing and menacing we must put the safety and security of our citizenry before the safety and security of the Syrian people.

The closure of the strait of Hormuz would cut the west’s oil supply and in doing so cause an enormous recession in an already unstable and unhealthy west. The threat to the oil supply cuts deep as it would limit the movement of goods and food and drive costs to unmanageable levels - in short it would cause another great depression.

So the question becomes more complicated it becomes a question of keep our troops to defend our oil supply and protect our interests or deploy all the assets we can to Syria because it is the immediate and tangible moral obligation?