Talking Tough on Iran

If you knew that you were likely to be framed by the police, would you go ahead and commit the crime anyway, reasoning that you had nothing to lose? Would that be the sensible thing to do? Then, at trial, suppose you decided that, even though you were innocent of the charges brought against you, it would be sensble to behave in a manner that gave the jury reason to suppose that you might in fact be guilty after all. Would that be a sensible policy?

That’s the rough-and-ready comparison I’d draw with the question – still vexed, it seems – of how to talk about events in post-election Iran. Plenty of commenters and other folk, such as Tim at Conservative Party Reptile, argue that no-good has come from taking a measured, even softly-softly approach. But if rhetoric were likely to change the Iranian regime’s behaviour then it might have done so by now.