Iptables won't block anything in that situation, so if you rely on that for safety, it's not safe, but it won't in it self cause any problems, and as such it ...
I have the iptables listed shown, but my server still appears to be accepting all incoming connections (ie: bittorrent peers are still connecting, even though ...
Firewall rules include dropping all incoming traffic, allowing SSH, ICMP, and related traffic, and forwarding TCP traffic on specific ports and interfaces.