On the face of it, this is a ludicrous proposition; leading members of the party having had an honourable history opposing the war, the subsequent occupation of Iraq and the use of Shannon airport by the US to transport its troops to and from the war zone.

On the other hand, the Green Party is now in government with two parties who have been enthusiastic facilitators of that war, even in the conflict's early days when it was illegal under international law and when anybody paying attention could see that it was based on the myth of weapons of mass destruction and lies about Iraq's role as a centre of world terrorism. (That may well be true now, of course, as a result of the invasion, but it wasn't then). By any reckoning, opposition to the war and to the use of Shannon was a core value of the Irish Green Party. But since the Greens entered government in June, the number of troops who have passed through Shannon on war duty has topped the one-million mark.

The Green attitude now to the Shannon issue is a kind of shouldershrugging resignation:

"Sure, what can a little party like us do when faced with mighty Fianna Fail?" John Gormley behaves like a simpering Lois Lane in the presence of superman Bertie Ahern. His has been a pathetic performance.

The Green Party might not be in favour of the use of Shannon in the war effort, therefore, but it most certainly isn't doing anything to oppose it, or to influence Irish foreign policy in any positive manner. In time, this may be seen as the biggest of the many u-turns and sell-outs that its TDs and ministers have perfomed over the last few months, and which have left many of them looking more like Fianna Failers than the Fianna Failers themselves.

For the moment, illegal attacks on sovereign nations not being on the immediate horizon, coverage of the Greens centres on some of their more obvious backtracking.

The row over the route of the M3 motorway is providing weekly humiliation for Gormley, who has also been left looking foolish by his confused enunciation of, and sneaky retreat from, Green policy on incineration.

The party's sudden embrace of the joys of EU treaties is bubbling just under the news agenda. The Greens have even managed to sell out out hares and deer.

There is, however, one potential controversy in the offing which could put all those other rows into sharp relief.

And that is the possibility that, before he leaves office as the least popular and most incompetent president in US history, George Bush will try to do something for his legacy by attacking Iran.

For a while now, the New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh has been writing about the inevitabilty of such a war against Tehran.

Mostly, his sources were anonymous members of US intelligence and the military.

Perhaps as a result, his warnings did not receive as much notice as they should have.

In recent times, however, the US administration has been doing its best to soften up its electorate to the possibility that Iran may be attacked. Vice-president Dick Cheney, in particular, has been vocal in arguing that something must be done to curb what he claims are Iranian threats to the stability of the world in general and the Middle East in particular.

As ever with this US administration, there isn't a whole lot of evidence to back up its suggestion that the Iranians are a serious worry to the security of the world. But, as ever with this US administration, the facts have never been a barrier to taking action. There is now a huge momentum in the US towards bombing of several sites in Iran, an act of war which would inevitably lead to the deaths of thousands of innocent people.

The US argues that Iran is close to developing nuclear weapons and that it is fomenting terrorism by aiding and abetting insurgent groups in Iraq, although there is little enough evidence for either contention. (Or, to put it another way, there is as much evidence for both arguments as there was for the presence of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in Iraq).

As far as the nuclear "threat" goes, the US has hardly anything to go on. Iran has no nuclear weapons. Even if it was today to go full tilt at the job of developing such weapons, some reports, including one by the CIA, suggest that it would be 2017 before it would have them. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has never censured Iran for using its nuclear power programme as a cover for developing weapons. In terms of Iran's cooperation with the IAEA, which hasn't been what it could have been, the strongest criticism that the agency has been able to muster recently is that this is "regrettable".

The evidence for Iran being a major player in the insurgency against the Iraqi government is even more flimsy and ignores the embarassing irony for the US that the government in Iraq, which is Shia-dominated, regards itself as a friend of the Shia-dominated Iran.

In all of its bluster about what Iran is supposed to be doing in Iraq, the US administration has never come up with a sensible reply to the question: why would Iran want to destabilise an Iraqi government of which it is an ally, and with which it does much business?

In any case, the war bells continue to toll. Should Bush and Cheney go for broke and attack Iran, they will do so without the sanction of the United Nations, and once again Ireland may be faced with the dilemma of watching Shannon airport being used to facilitate an illegal war in the Middle East.

What will the Greens do then?