Iran Softens Stand on British Sailors
Captured British Navy personnel Faye (Topsy) Turney who may be released soon
Some sense seems to have dawned on Iranian leadership. The latest news is that Iran now admits that 15 British Navy personnel may have entered Iranian waters by ‘mistake’.
Forbes says that “Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki discounted the possibility of an escalation in the crisis, suggesting the British vessels may have made a mistake.
” ‘This is a violation that just happened. It could be natural. They did not resist,’ he told The Associated Press.
” ‘Today or tomorrow, the lady will be released,’ Mottaki said Wednesday on the sidelines of an Arab summit in the Saudi capital, referring to sailor Faye Turney, 26, the only woman among the 15.
For more on sailor Faye Turney please click here…
“Britain, meanwhile, said it was freezing talks on all other issues with Iran until it freed all 15 crew members seized last week…”
Read on…
“Footage of the 15 British sailors and marines being held in Iran has been aired by Iranian TV,” says the Sky News.
“The pictures show the group being arrested, eating food in captivity and carries an interview with Leading Seaman Faye Turney…”
And here’s the Sky News story…if you are interested…
7 Responses to “Iran Softens Stand on British Sailors”
As I understand it, the other 14 might be paraded on Iranian television soon.
Iran does this over and over. They have learned from North Korea quite well. They hint to concessions that raise hope and then turn it into a long drawn out affair only to walk away in a huff. When the time is right and the internationl impatience is reaching a breaking point they then say okay lets talk again and soften their stance only to wash and repeat.
So whats new here? Nothing. Its actually very old. The North Koreans have perfected the technique and the Iranians are just using it and looking for ways to make it even more effective.
Remember a guy named Saddam Hussein. He did it over and over for years and years. His problem was he was banking on the usual antiwar crowd to help him out and there basically was none in 2002. His bad. It got him hanged.
Problem is you can’t just invade over small things like this. Are they unfortunate? Yes. Are they annoying as hell? Yes. But it is one of those things in life that must be dealt with. And they are more bold now since we are bogged down in Iraq and refusing to deal with them, so that is our fault on that.
For Saddam we were doing just fine. He was contained, every once and a while he would try something, and we would send him a few cruise missiles to show we were watching and that there are consequences. And it wasn’t the antiwar crowd that kept our government back from invading Iraq earlier, it was thoughtful people who actually looked ahead to the possible consequences of such an invasion and saw that the mess we are in now was the most likely outcome. Just because someone doesn’t support the Iraq mess, doesn’t make them antiwar.
We go into Iran over a few captured sailors, then we end up making a similar mess as Israel did in Lebanon. Support for the Iranian regime is waning among its citizens, but go and bomb their infrastructure and they’ll be behind the regime as strongly as this country was behind Bush after 9/11.
Ashen Shard said:
> Problem is you can’t just invade over small things like this.
Invasiion for any reasons, discouraged — Iran is larger than Iraq and has tougher terrain. Forceful action, of course should be considered (including destruction of various targets throughout Iran, in particular related to aggression Iran commits against us in Iraq).
> We go into Iran over a few captured sailors,
> then we end up making a similar mess as
> Israel did in Lebanon.
if Iran started rocketing us in Iraq, (which is what Israel also was subjected to, if you recall the entire situation), of course we should respond in some forceful way.
Another Lebanon is not inevitable (typical hostile anti-Western dishonest propaganda aside). The big problem is that we are now preoccupied in Iraq and this constrains what we could or should be willing to do as much as or more than what more forceful aggressive and destructive acts Iran may choose to commit.
I actually am all for Sanctions. They proved to be George Bush’s undoing.
No one believed they were working. So we invaded Iraq thinking surely hes up to his eyeballs in WMDS. Come to find out the country was destitute from the sanctions imposed upon them.
Iran is way more fragile then Iraq. They will hand the Mullahs heads to them on a platter if we just turn the screws on them for 2 or 3 years. Iraq is doing that. We just need to be in Iraq for about 2 or 3 more years and Iran will fold along with Syria and Terror funding.
George Bush said it would be a long war. He just forgot that we live in the age of microwaves. We want it in 60 seconds not 60 minutes.
Ashen Shard said:
> Problem is you can’t just invade over small things like this.
What!! small? If it were your wife, brother, or son would it be small? That is such a disturbing statment that kidnaping people is just no big deal in international politics.
Ofcourse it’s small dude, compare to 1 million people that have died in Iraq. US is just getting weaker and weaker, and Eropian countries and China stronger and stronger, in 10-20 years, US can’t bully other countries like that, as they will not be the strongest nation in the world, everybody outside US knows that.