Kissing cousins

Everyone knows that pairing fucked-up relations will likely produce fucked-up offspring.

Iran and Syria heightened tension across the Middle East and directly confronted the Bush administration yesterday by declaring they had formed a mutual self-defence pact to confront the "threats" now facing them.

The move, which took the Foreign Office by surprise, was announced after a meeting in Tehran between the Iranian vice-president, Mohammed Reza Aref, and the Syrian prime minister, Naji al-Otari.

Syria and Iran do not have a natural affinity but are alleged by western governments to have engaged in covert military cooperation in the past.

The British official said the pact could just be rhetoric, "a marriage of convenience" for two countries feeling a need to bolster one another.

This little love affair will undoubtedly produce something ugly (and very furry).