I was being ironic but in the end NATO will come to regret their likely failure to eradicate this band of pirates - Israel is pushing and pushing to extend the bounds of what behaviour by them is "acceptable" to western governments most likely so that at some point in the not too distant future, they can "ethnically cleanse" the Palestinians without any repurcussions for Israel. The subsequent blowback against the West is what scares me.

I hope that NATO will intervene to stop these wanton acts of piracy in their backyard!

But that announcement had a single purpose that was nothing to do with Iran and nuclear power. It was to distract attention from the Goldstone Report.

Look, all MI6 is good for these days is cutting and pasting dossiers from the Internet. Since Israel papers have been publishing these pathetic stories for years, it can't have been hard for some low-paid Eastern European employed on minimum wage at MI6 to Google Haaretz, JPost and Ynet for 'Israeli jet Saudi Arabia Iran'. A few more clicks and another world-class dossier is going out the door.

Has anyone checked that these poppy seeds weren't for culinary use? Normally to extract opium, an incision is made in the seed pod and the rubber-like sap that seeps from the incision is collected for further processing. While the seeds do contain opium it is in a low concentration. As for the seeds being used to plant further crops of opium poppies, it would make more sense for the farmers to collect the seeds they need from their current crop to be planted for the next season. I can't help but feel that someone has cocked up again.

Any sane person who had just hijacked a ship carrying 500 tons of weapons from a hostile government would not take it into a commercial port to inspect those weapons as they could have been booby trapped. That Israel did suggests that they knew the weapons hadn't been booby trapped as they supplied the weapons.

It wouldn't surprise me if this was another fabrication by Israel, just like the "arms convoy" in Sudan, the "nuclear reactor" in Syria and the "secret submarine base" in Eritrea among many others. Anything to divert attention from the Goldstone Report and maintain the pretense that the IDF is "the most moral army in the world" rather than a grubby bunch of war criminals who murder unarmed women, children and other non-combatants. They really are getting desperate!

Bush did show some empathy with bin Laden after 9/11, he allowed family members to leave the country immediately and he withdrew American troops from Saudi Arabia. The only problem, he invaded Iraq with them.

What real evidence do we have that US intelligence really knew about this enrichment plant "for years"? Nothing whatsoever beyond an unattributable comment by some US officials. We had so many of those during the previous regime that turned out to be lies, that I see no reason to believe the current regime. So where is this facility located? All we have had are some educated guesses from a third-rate NGO in Washington that has previously be a pipeline for crap "intelligence" about a warehouse next to the Euphrates. Where are the photographs showing the work in progress? Could it be that US so-called intelligence doesn't really know because the IAEA has done its job for a change and kept Iran's letter about this new plant confidential as required by its statutes?

Tony Blair even when so far as to claim the World War 2 was fought to stop the Holocaust. There is a little problem with this, WW2 started two years before the Final Solution was implemented.