The decision by the UK government to take steps towards the re-opening of the UK Embassy in Iran carries with it a potentially dangerous precedent, firstly in misrepresenting the values supposedly underlining UK foreign policy, and secondly in providing tacit approval for Iran's current actions, and by extension how Iranis conducting itself regionally and internationally.

We humans do have a strange way of dealing with illness at times. So many of us seem to take the ‘if it ain’t hanging off it’s probably fine’ approach to that twinging chest pain or that cough that has not gone away for a month.

The active sectarian rivalry and conflict in Iraq – long exploited by successive governments in Bagdad – has reached crisis proportions. Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and a primary oil centre, was overrun and occupied June 12th 2014 by the Sunni militant group the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham) (ISIS) which formerly fought under the al-Qaeda banner. ISIS are making gains on their previous successes in taking large parts of the central city of Fallujah in December 2013

The rise of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham) in Iraq and Syria is a source of major concern across the Middle East. The Islamist group’s ambition to create an Islamic state is not limited to Iraq and Syria, as confusion over its name may suggest.

On Tuesday, the jihadist group ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham) launched a long-planned assault on Iraq, seizing control of Mosul, the country’s second largest city, after taking large parts of the central city of Fallujah and nearby Ramadi in December 2013.

If recent events in Ukraine were not disturbing enough for those who might occasionally worry about the future for their children and grandchildren, one need only now look towards the Middle East, and a little further.

The fall of Mosul, allegedly to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), is not the military victory it has been made out to be. For a start, as the New York Times and Agence France-Presse report, ISIS gunmen (who faced an army outnumbering them fifty-to-one) were able to occupy strategic positions around the city only after Iraqi commanders ordered their troops to stand down and retreat.

Whether it is through well-intentioned, idealistic, though incompetent bumbling, or otherwise a calculated and strategically orchestrated effort, Barack Obama’s foreign policy has brought the Western world to the brink of decline and irrelevance. Whatever grand statements he gave at his West Point speech, they do not reflect the realities on the ground of his policies.

We are pleased to announce that our submission to The House of Commons Defence Select Committee inquiry on the subject of “Intervention: When, Why and How” now features prominently in the much-awaited and substantive report published by Parliament today.

On Wednesday, 23 April, 2014, the HIC was invited to attend Tony Blair's keynote speech on the Middle East and North Africa at Bloomberg HQ, London. The central argument Blair made, which underpinned his later analysis, was the assertion that religious extremism - specifically radical Islam - is the single greatest threat to global security today and one which is not abating, but growing in reach, power and willingness to commit acts of incredible violence.