Hostage Taking Pays Off - Again
By Wubbies World Posted in Spotlight Blogs | War — Comments (9) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
It does seem that the British Government is about to give the Iranians what ever they want to get their solders free. A "captured" Iranian "diplomat" has been released by unknown captors and is now back in Iran.
The Iranian diplomat who was released on Monday was kidnapped in mysterious circumstances two months ago.
Iranian authorities reported the release of Jalal Sharafi, the second secretary at the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, and said he would return to Tehran later Tuesday.
Fox News has the story that the 5 Iranians captured in Irbil by the US military is now on the negotiation table too.
A senior Iraqi foreign ministry official said on Tuesday that the government was "intensively" seeking release of five Iranians detained by the U.S. military more than two months ago in northern Iraq.
"We are intensively seeking the release of the five Iranians," the senior official said.
"This will be a factor that will help in the release of the British sailors and marines" held by Iran since March 25.
It doesn't get anymore disheartening than this. The Iranians knew the British would cave and not confront them, and they were right. I do believe that in deference to the British, our government is only going to grant what they request, but I would be aghast if it was willingly. However, I have no idea how willing we are in this matter.
Instead of locking them up in prison, we should simply shoot captured Iranian agents in the head, and dump their bodies at the border.
---
Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community
....it doesn't matter how big a military you command. It only matters how big a wuss you are. And Jimmy Carter was the "gold standard" for wusses. I hope this one doesn't drag on for 444 days.
Despite Iran's status as a major exporter of raw oil, it is heavily dependent on imports for the end products, such as gasoline.
Iran is building more refineries to alleviate this problem, but they will not be done for at least the next couple years. Until then, Iran remains very vulnerable to a blockade. that cripples their economy.
The domestic politics of Iran bear noting here as well. The Iranian government buys popular support with lavish gasoline subsidies. They plan to raise the gas price a bit, but it will still be many times below market. Iranians take these unrealistically low gas prices for granted and would be VERY upset (and hurt in the pocketbook) if they disappeared.
Finally, if the Iranians attack our ships, use the opportunity to destroy their navy, as well as any of their air force and land-based artillery/missile batteries that are reachable without ground troops. In addition to punishing hostage-taking, this could be a good opportunity to eliminate much of Iran's air and naval forces without a ground war. We could set their military back years.
Are these five the same Iranians that Petraeus refused to give up, despite the pressure from the CIA and State to make a friendly gesture to Iran?
I believe he said that he'd give them up when they ran out of information or he ran out of food.
"Wubbies World" - MSgt, U.S. Air Force (Retired): "Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know." -Jer 33:3-
The Iranians have played this remarkably well so far. They even managed to get an article in the sympathetic British lefty rag, the Independent. It blames the whole mess on a US "botched raid" to capture some Iranians in Iraq. The US didn't get the ones that they wanted, but did get five Iranian operatives. So the Iranians, in the Indpendent's moral world, were justified in kidnapping some Brits to get their people back.
Nicely played, Iran. If the hostages aren't freed, it's the US/Bush's fault.
At least the lefties in the UK (there sure seems to be a lot of them, now) have somebody to be angry at besides their own government. Lord knows they couldn't be angry at Iran. It's only a matter of time before Iran becomes the favored vacation destination for the left and we start to hear about how great their health care system is.
---
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
The Independent is just an embarrassment, although at least these days they don't make any great secret that they are an entirely issue based rag with no real claims of independent analysis.
Thankfully it remains the weakest selling broadsheet newspaper in the UK. There's a reason left wing liberals are called "Guardianistas" instead. :)
I've been appalled at the weakness shown by my government in regards to the Iranian hostage situation. With the British Navy having already demonstrated through GPS satellite data that the troops were *not* in Iranian territorial waters, it's not like there's even reasonable argument about that. But barring a few comments about how kinda bad the treatment of the hostages is, what with forced "confessions" and being paraded on Iranian TV...nothing. And now we're going to just back down?
Not like we need to invade Iran as a direct response, but hell some kind of strength in response rather than appeasement would be nice. I want the hostages back, but doing it by giving Iran everything they could possibly want just gives them perfect motivation to pull the same scam again.
Incidentally, I'd like to thank President Bush for being the first person to actually have the guts to even call them "hostages". Pity I have to rely on him rather than my own Prime Minister.
It works like hell!
Iran takes hostages right after Congress votes to withdraw. My, what a coincidence!