Do politicians ever learn anything?

I was never a great fan of Tony Blair.

On European issues he could sound reasonably intelligent, but on most everything else he seemed to be nothing more than a clone of the Tory Party leaders that he had replaced in 1997.

He was fond of debt-driven economies in both the public and private sector, and never seemed too concerned about fixing the issues affecting people at the bottom end of the financial scale - indeed his drive for full employment seemed to include a penchant for forcing people to accept low wage jobs which would never allow the individual to develop the possibility to live an independent life.

His worst mistake though without question was his decision to help Bush invade Iraq. You would have given him credit for understanding that the terrorists were in Afghanistan, not Iraq, and stepping up involvement there.

Mistaking a megolomaniac Arab nationalist dictator, running a secular state, for a Muslim fundamentalist sympathiser though was extraordinarily naive.

You would have thought that he would have learned from what happened in Iraq that there was a difference betwen Sunni and Shia Islam - one that has caused a rift in the Muslim world in the same way the Protestant/Catholic schism split the Christian world for generations.

You would also have expected that he would have had the intelligence to learn that Al-Qaeda is a strictly Sunni movement. Islamofascist? No question, but the Shia were another lower level of individuals to be separated into a separate box to be demeaned or even eradicated.

And you would have thought that he understood that Iran is the home of Shia Islam, not Sunni Islam. You would have expected him to realise that Iran has enormous problems itself with Al-Qaeda elements in the country, who would be no allies of Ahmedinajad and the Mullahs?

And you would also expected him to realise that wars do not always liberate people. Like a revolution often creates a counter-revolution, so war often simply embitters a people invaded, who then start a "counter-war".

Of course if you spend your whole time listening to what the belligerent anti-Arab (however moderate) Israeli government is saying, then most of these facts will pass over your head.

So Blair's recent statement about Iran being (I cannot recall the exact words) a viper's nest of terrorists, is provocative in the extreme and probably has "made in Tel-Aviv" written all over it.

It is though also in keeping with the thinking of the American Republican Party (whose ideology seems much closer to his than that of the Democrats, who you would have thought were his natural allies).

It is in many respects (if Iraq is anything to go by) a call to war - on the discredited Pre-emptive Strike Principle (upper-case for emphasis NB).

Let us clarify this. There may well be terrorists in Iran - the Basij are diabolical law enforcers and the epitome of brutality, and Iran does undoubtedly encourage acts of violence in other parts of the world. But the terrorists in Iran are not, and will never be, part of Al-Qaeda. You are as likely to see Ian Paisley become Pope as you are to see Iran ally itself with that version of Sunni extremism.

After the botch-up in Iraq, all the phoney claims that preceded the invasion, and the resulting chaos following the invasion, you would have thought that Blair would have learned.

Instead he just continues down the same ignominious path that he followed in 2003.

Provoke, invent, invade.

He seems unfortunately to have learned very little. Hopefully his Labour Party colleagues will realise the mistakes that he made. Maybe even the Tories will hold off involvement when their GOP allies win power in 2013 and think that it is good politics to have a foreign war to distract the population.

And while many of us would like to see an end of the Shia Islamofascist regime in Teheran, invasion by a foreign power hardly seems the way to bring it about.