War & Peace Quote by Liam Fox

Fox frames Iran less as a single policy problem than as a contagion that would collapse the entire rulebook. The phrase "as we know it" isn’t decorative; it’s an attempt to raise the stakes from a regional dispute to a systemic tipping point, where one exception becomes the precedent that unravels the Non-Proliferation Treaty’s basic bargain. He’s not arguing that Iran is uniquely irrational. He’s arguing that Iran would make everyone else rational in the worst way: by turning nuclear acquisition into the sensible insurance policy for rival states.

The rhetoric is built on a domino logic that’s meant to feel unavoidable: Iran, then Saudi Arabia, then Egypt, then "other countries". Naming Riyadh and Cairo does two things at once. It signals that proliferation wouldn’t be confined to pariah actors; it would migrate to US-aligned capitals, making the West’s strategic life harder and moral posture messier. It also pressures policymakers by implying that passivity on Iran is complicity in a broader regional rearmament.

"Bequeath to the next generation" is the emotional lever. It converts an abstract security architecture into an intergenerational debt, a line designed for voters as much as for diplomats. The subtext is political: any accommodation with Iran, any tolerance of threshold capability, is cast as historically negligent.

Context matters: Fox is a British conservative voice speaking from a post-Iraq-war landscape where intelligence claims are scrutinized and appetite for new conflict is limited. So he reaches for the most durable justification available: not regime change, not punishment, but preserving a fragile global norm before it cascades into the Middle East’s worst-case future.