The Guardian | Alistair Burt: The UK should use its diplomatic reach to help promote a rare opportunity for improvement in US-Iran relations

Even by the standards of the Middle East it was a remarkable week. You have to deal with what presents itself in the region – there is little point in rehearsing justification for any action by reference to previous activity. Everyone has their own history.

The rights and wrongs of the killing of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani will long be debated, so they are pointless to pursue here. It was always going to be about what happened next. The consequences could as likely have been propelling the region towards outright conflict as something different. But the combination of a symbolic retaliation, followed by the shooting down of a scheduled passenger airliner – and now the admission of such – provides an opportunity few could sensibly have predicted.

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