As the mad brinkmanship proceeds in the Middle East, it is worth bearing a few things in mind.

1) There is only one country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons, and it is a highly aggressive racist state that visits untold misery on its neighbours and illegally occupies their land. It is called Israel.

2) Making a nuclear weapon takes a lot of time and material. Both Syria and Iran are many years away, even if they are trying to produce a nuclear bomb – which they probably are. Given Israel’s nuclear bomb, and given what the US did to Iraq, I can quite understand their desire to go nuclear for protection. Bombing them just makes this worse.

3) A nuclear free Middle East, including Israel, and a withdrawal of all US military forces from Iraq, is the path to peace and agreement. Everything else is a build up to a big war – which is what some people want, of course.

4) Bombing someone else’s country is plain illegal outside of formal war. Even then, there are limits on what is legitimate.

5) My fellow University Rector, Glasgow’s Mordechai Vanunu, is still effectively imprisoned for telling us about Israel’s nuclear weapons programme. He should be released immediately.