Recently Iran has detained 15 British sailors and is accusing them of spying. They claim the sailors were in Iranian waters, while England claims there were in Iraqi waters. A witness, an Iraqi fishermen, supports England’s claim. Now Iran is using this situation as leverage to force England to release 50 Iranians captured by British forces in Iraq.
What does this mean? If it is in fact true that Iran entered Iraqi territory in order to capture British solders, well then that is a significant act of war. England surely is not going to allow these sailors to be part of an Iranian show trial against the west, which is what I think Iran really wants. I think that if this situation does not resolve itself in the next few days, then England will have to launch some sort of attack on Iran, which no doubt will get us involved. It was a real stupid move on Iran’s part capturing these sailors.
If the sailors were actually in Iranian waters, then that is a whole another issue and we will have a huge diplomatic mess on our hands. Iran could legitimately use this as support for their case against western imperialism.
This to me is a potentially scary string of events. Sometime I think Iran is looking for a fight with the west. It would no doubt incite more Islamic fascism, give Iran a legitimate (in their minds) use for a nuclear program, and would (again in their minds) prove the west is against the Muslim faith. Other times I think Iran is just trying to put on a diplomatic show, trying desperately to look like a powerful force in world politics.
Either way we ought to take this incident very seriously. In 1979 a group of radical Islamic students took the American embassy hostage in Iran with the intention of showing the world “The great Satan”. What started as a planned 3-day “peaceful protest” turned into a 444 day hostage crisis. Almost 30 years later, little has changed within Iran. If anything, Iran has become more defiant and more violent.
Let us hope this situation resolves itself peacefully, if not, expect to be at war with Iran by years end. My prediction: Iran will release the hostages after a few more days of grumbling and baseless demands.
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2 comments:
Ah, if only the US hadn't overthrown the democratically elected PM of Iran in 1953 because he nationalized the oil companies. They replaced him with the shah - who was the root of the Islamic Revolution. Maybe if the States could learn to leave well enough alone...
That is over simplifying things a bit. Most of this mess in the Middle East is fall out from the cold war. With Iran, we did not want the Soviets gaining influence in the region so we, as we did in Afghanistan, supported what turned out to be the wrong guy. Granted I am only part of the way through “Guests of the Ayatollah”. I am sure I will have more to say later.
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