A deadly trial of strength that could ignite war

I THOUGHT that there were only two things in life that were guaranteed – death and taxes – but now we can add a third: British soldiers in Afghanistan.

Last week the Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson coyly wouldn’t admit that an extra 450 troops are to be sent there, but he wouldn’t deny it either.

This is in response to a plea from President Trump and it is likely to be announced at a Nato summit in July at which he will be present.

But didn’t our commitment to Afghanistan finish with almost 200 dead, and a bitter sigh, in 2014?

Yes... well, our commitment to combat operations finished then but ever since we’ve maintained about 600 troops whose numbers have stealthily increased every time America jerked our chain.

Now, I happen to believe that our presence there is right and proper and that we should have more forces fighting the predatory, malevolent Taliban rather than simply training Afghan soldiers.

But that’s not the line of our risk-averse leaders. They prefer to offer the smallest number that will mollify our US masters.

Theresa May must have a care, however, for just around the corner lurks another bloody conflict into which the US may be forced to plunge with us, her timid accomplice, alongside.

Two weeks ago Iran fired rockets from Syria at Israeli positions on the Golan Heights and received dozens back in return which killed more than 20 people.

This is the first time that there has been an exchange of fire between the two nations and while it’s not all-out war, it adds another piece to the brutal mosaic of the region.

The latest development fuses two separate confrontations which have been fomenting for decades: Israelis versus Arabs and Shi’ites versus Sunnis. The leading Shi’ite power, Iran, which is led by unbending, fundamentalist Ayatollahs, scorns the West and its values while promoting terrorism and violence.

Now, despite the apparent nuclear with the US, its propaganda still refers to America as the Great Satan and Britain as the Little Satan, recognising no difference between the two.

Iran, of course, supports Assad’s Syrian government which not only gives Tehran another ally in the region but also allows her to post missiles and troops way to the west of her borders and close to US bases, to Israel and to British forces on Cyprus.

That’s only one part of the equation, though. The strain between Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia increases by the day.

Saudi and the Gulf States control the immense resources of the region’s oil and many hardliners in Tehran want their country to use its military superiority to seize that wealth for themselves.

Remember, many of these men either fought in or have distinct memories of the IranIraq War in the 1980s. Their fundamentalists would welcome a conflict that would involve both the Great and Little Satan neither of whom, they calculate, would have the stomach for similar butchery.

Why on earth, then, did President Trump rip up the 2015 agreement that reduced economic sanctions on Iran in return for a freeze on nuclear research? Surely, a volatile Tehran should not be provoked?

Washington’s rationale, though, is that an aggressive approach to North Korea has brought some form of rapprochement with Kim Jongun. So, similar tactics may lead the Ayatollahs back to the table and a path not just to nuclear and conventional de-escalation but also a withdrawal from Syria.

The trouble with this is that the US is not dealing with one supremo as they are in North Korea. In Iran, power is wielded by clerics, soldiers and politicians – all of whom are vying to prove themselves tougher than the others. But, if they’re driven into a corner, they’ll bite back and that’s just what they’re doing by attacking America’s ally Israel.

All this leaves another ally, Britain, on a knife-edge. Remember what Saudi-born Osama Bin Laden said: “God willing, our raids on (Westerners) will continue as long as your support to the Israelis will continue.” Those words were spoken from Afghanistan, the very country into whose dodgy waters we are dipping another toe.

It’s sometimes hard to join the dots in this region. If Afghanistan’s going bad again, we have a duty to use troops not just to stabilise that country but also to shore up neighbouring Pakistan, whose nuclear arsenal must not fall into the hands of the Taliban.

But why should distant Afghanistan involve us in a war between Iran and Israel? Well, because the whole situation’s akin to an a spider’s web with 50,000 volts running through it.

We trade with Saudi; we’re close allies with Israel; we have many thousands of Britons of Pakistani origin and, most importantly, we are America’s poodle.

Good luck, Mrs May. That spider’s web has got all sorts of ugly customers at its edges and being caught in it will cost us dear.