June 23, 2004

Iran Postpones Talks on British Sailors

The release of eight British sailors has been postponed at least until Thursday, Iranian state television reported Wednesday, contradicting reports that the men were already freed.

There was no immediate clarification. Hours earlier, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman told The Associated Press the eight Britons had been released.

The sailors were detained Monday for illegally entering Iranian waters as they traveled in three boats on a waterway that runs along the Iran-Iraq border.
[...]
In London, the British Foreign Office said it had not been told officially that the release had been delayed to Thursday. A British diplomat said, however, that a delay was possible because it was already nighttime in Iran.
[...]
A top military official said the sailors were being released because their intrusion into Iran's waters was apparently a mistake.

After their capture, the sailors were shown on Iranian television blindfolded and seated cross-legged on the ground.
[...]
Iran had earlier said the men would be prosecuted.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman told AP that Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi played a key role in resolving the minor border incident that had threatened to turn into a major diplomatic crisis.
[Don't look now, Britain, but it's an act of war!--Jen]

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw had called Kharrazi on Tuesday to ask for the release of the sailors.
[Too polite! Straw should have demanded their release...or else.--J.T.]

The waterway, Iraq's main link with the Persian Gulf that divides Iran and Iraq, has long been a source of tension between the neighbors. The 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war broke out after Saddam Hussein claimed the entire waterway.
[...]
British-Iranian relations have run hot and cold for years. The detentions follow a fresh strain after London helped draft a resolution rebuking Iran for past nuclear cover-ups at last week's meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors.

Iran says its program is aimed only at producing energy, while the United States accuses Tehran of trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran accused Britain, which it had seen as a partner in the investigation into its nuclear activities, of caving in to U.S. pressure.

Iranians repeatedly demonstrated in front of the British Embassy in Tehran last month, throwing stones at the building to protest the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. Britain is America's main coalition partner in Iraq.

Protesters also condemned war damage to Shiite holy shrines in Iraq, demanded the expulsion of the British ambassador to Tehran and called for the embassy to be closed.

British-Iranian ties also were strained in 1989 when the founder of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, against British author Salman Rushdie.

In 1998, the Iranian government declared it would not support the fatwa and the two countries exchanged ambassadors in 1999.

In 2002, Iran rejected a British candidate for ambassador, claiming he was a Jewish spy. A year later, shots were fired at the British Embassy in Tehran, after Britain briefly held an Iranian diplomat accused of helping to mastermind the car bombing of a Jewish center in Argentina.

What are the mad mullahs up to now???
I have no doubt that the British navy has been making patrols on the Shatt-al-Arab (Can't you just hear the lads having a laugh about the name "Shatt?") waterway since OIF began over a year-and-a-half ago.
(Who can tell where a border ends in a waterway and another begins?)
So the Iranians made their move and this is indeed a very hostile act.
If there was any doubt about that, the Iranians confirmed it by airing video of the Brit sailors on TV blindfolded and "confessing," all of which are violations of the Geneva Convention.


The Sun elaborates on the broadcast video of the captured sailors even further:

The Iranians breached the Geneva Convention by showing the six Royal Marine Commandos and two Royal Navy sailors wearing blindfolds.

They also falsely claimed the eight were heavily armed.

Pictures beamed around the Arab world showed footage of M-16 rifles — claiming they belonged to the Commandos. But they were US Marines’ weapons taken months earlier.

Check out the Iranian gratitude factor, also:

It came six months after Britain helped hundreds of thousands made homeless in the Bam earthquake that killed 35,000 Iranians on Boxing Day.

Millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ cash was spent on a rescue operation.

The Marines are said to be from Scottish units. They include ex-Scottish amateur boxing champ Scott Fallon.

I believe the threat still exists that Iran may put them on trial for their "crimes."
This is punishment for what they must regard as Tony Blair's "betrayal" when he didn't run interference (along with the perfidious French and their poodle the Germans) for Iran at the IAEA meeting.
It also may be an attempt to smoke out how committed the UK is to fighting the War on Terror.
In its way, it's similar to the Al Queda bombing of the Madrid subway on 3/11 that got Asnar out of power...it's obvious that Blair has sizable opposition at home to his support of President Bush and our WOT (and his party just did very badly in the elections a week ago) and maybe the Iranians are hoping that public pressure, inflamed by this incident, will force Blair to pull Britain out of the Coalition, like Spain.
Or maybe the mullahs are crazy and they really do have those nukes and are itiching to use them.
They are very much a part of the axis of evil that needs to be "regime changed" and they are really pushing it--God knows why.
If I were the mullahs, I'd drop this and say that they were the ones who made the mistake, but they've used this waterway to wage an 8-year war with Saddam that cost them hundreds of thousands of lives and we Americans know all about their hostage taking habits.
Thank God we don't have a man in the White House like Jimmy Carter and Blair can be tough when the time comes.
The mullahs may be about to find out about nukes, from the receiving end and of course, we have 150,000 troops just next door.
Until this is resolved, however, may God be with these 8 British servicemen.