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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Why Iran Released the Hostages |
| 2007-04-05 |
| By Kenneth R. Timmerman The latest looney-tune story from the left was spun by Patrick Cockburn, an intrepid reporter for London’s Independent newspaper. According to this Iranian-sponsored fairy tale, it’s all Bush’s fault. That’s right. The fact that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards navy seized 15 British sailors and marines and took them hostage in Iraqi waters never would have happened if George W. Bush hadn’t ordered U.S. troops in Iraq to capture Gen. Minojahar Firouzandeh, a top Rev. Guards intelligence officer on Jan. 10, 2007. It appears that Gen. Firouzandeh was paying a courtesy call to an Iranian “consulate” in Irbil, Iraq, when U.S. and Iraqi troops decided to raid the place. Luckily for Firouzandeh, he and another high-level visitor – said to be Mohammed Jaafari, the deputy chairman of the Supreme Council on National Security – had been tipped off by Iraqi Kurdish friends and high-tailed it out of dodge, just in time. Instead of Firouzandeh and Jaafari, coalition troops arrested six other Iranians, including three top officers of the Quds Force, the overseas terrorist arm of the Iranian Rev. Guards. One Iranian, who was operating under diplomatic cover, was subsequently released. The other five were caught in the act of trying to eat their passports or otherwise destroy their identity papers and are still in U.S. custody. Because of America’s audacity in arresting Iranian intelligence officers using a visa office in northern Iraq as a staging area to funnel support to Iraqi insurgents, Iran was compelled to take hostage a team of British sailors who were operating in Iraqi waters at the opposite end of the country. Got that? According to this version of events, if the United States and Britain would just allow Iran to run roughshod over Iraq, supply terrorists with fresh weapons and suitcases of cash, everything would be just fine. Cockburn was right about one thing, however. He called the U.S. arrests “a significant escalation in the confrontation between the U.S. and Iran.” As I revealed on this page not long after the Jan. 10 raid, Iran’s leaders panicked when they heard the news. For only the second time in the 28 years the Iranian mullahs had been jerking the American chain, the Americans finally reacted with something akin to force. (The other time was during a one day battle in the Persian Gulf on April 18, 1988, during which the U.S. navy sunk one-third of the Iranian navy.) Iran’s leaders respect and fear U.S. military force. Clearly, they neither respect nor fear the Royal Navy. That’s why they chose to take British sailors hostage, not attack a U.S. boarding party or a U.S. ship, although some in the Iranian government were indeed advocating such action. The decision to release the fifteen British hostages, announced by Ahmadinejad on Wednesday, came after an intense and often bitter internal debate, sources in Tehran told me. If the capture of the British naval inspection team was clearly a coordinated effort by the Iranian government aimed at demonstrating Iran’s ability to confront the U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq and to divert international attention from the nuclear showdown, the decision to release the hostages showed the limits of Iran’s power and the fears of some leaders that too much provocation could backfire. Within four days of their capture on March 23, the fifteen Britons were split up into smaller groups and held in different areas, Iranian sources told me. This was a lesson learned from the 1979-1981 hostage crisis, when all 55 U.S. hostages were initially kept in one place, prompting the failed U.S. effort to rescue them. Early during the current hostage crisis, the British team was split up into five groups of three, to prevent any rescue attempt, with each group kept at a different military base. The Iranians would then bring several groups together and film them, to give the impression they were being held together. The order to capture the British sailors and marines was given by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself, my sources tell me. Khamenei’s top advisors argued that by striking out against a U.S. ally in Iraq, they would be sending a message to other European nations to step back from supporting the U.S. strategy of increasing pressure on Iran over its nuclear program. They saw the move as a clear test of Western resolve. And for awhile, this Iranian strategy appeared to be working. Britain’s European partners quickly forgot their treaty obligations and determined that the British sailors and marines were not really Europeans, thus obviating the need for a collective response from all members of the European Union. Although they might carry European Union passports when traveling to Italy or Greece, when British subjects got in trouble in Iran they were Britons first and last. “C’est vraiment une affaire qui ne passe pas outre-Manche,” the French center-left daily Le Monde commented on Tuesday. Translated into plain English, the French observed (accurately) that nobody on the correct side of the English Channel could give a rat’s behind about the fate of the British hostages. They had too much (commercially) at stake. Tony Blair’s efforts to get his European partners to consider scaling back export credits to Iran fell on deaf ears. Let’s hope his successors remember that heart-warming European response when the French and the Germans roll-out their next version of a collectivist constitution for the EU’s 25-member states. British companies, however, rallied to the call and backed off their planned participation in a oil trade show planned in Tehran from April 18-22. Just before the hostage crisis began, the Iranians boasted that 1,300 international companies had expressed interest in attending the show. On March 30, a British trade representative told me that only 13 UK companies had signed up for the trip. Since then, Iran appears to have pushed the show back by at least a week. As Britain refused to apologize for the behavior of its boarding party, continuing to insist that they were operating in Iraqi waters – not inside Iran’s territorial waters, as Tehran alleged – some of Khamenei’s advisors began to have second thoughts. Adding to those doubts were whispered reports that the USS Nimitz was steaming toward the Persian Gulf– making it the third Carrier Strike Group in the area. The Nimitz is expected to join the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and the USS John C. Stennis, both currently in the Persian Gulf, in the coming weeks. It left its home port of San Diego on April 2, but the Iranians apparently had advance warning of the Nimitz’s plans (hello?) On Friday, March 30, Khamenei’s top advisors met in an emergency session of the Supreme Council on National Security, chaired by Ali Larijani. Larijani is the regime’s top nuclear negotiator, and is a confidant of the Supreme Leader, while maintaining close ties to President Ahmadinejad. At that meeting, Revolutionary Guards commander Maj. Gen. Rahim Safavi reported that the deployment of the Nimitz suggested that a U.S. military invasion of Iran was being prepared for early May. He urged the Council to order the release of the British hostages as a gesture to defuse the tension in the region. The next day, however, the head of the Political and Cultural bureau of the Revolutionary Guards, Dr. Yadollah Javani, called Safavi a “traitor” for proposing the release of the hostages. While this internal dispute raged, Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers in charge of guarding the hostages continued intense debriefings, aimed at eliciting “confessions” from the British captives that were aired on Iranian television. The first inkling that the faction urging release of the hostages was winning appeared on Tuesday evening, when the influential Baztab website, run by former Revolutionary Guards commander Gen. Mohsen Rezai, reported that the British captives would soon be released. “It can now be said that the politicians who are for continuing relations with London have got the upper hand,” Baztab reported. So for now, Tehran’s leaders have backed down. Why? For one, they scored some domestic political points. Britain is not terribly popular in Iran, and is always suspected of some conspiratorial plot aimed at destroying Iran’s territorial integrity or national sovereignty. So any blow against Britain is a sure win for Iranian jingoists. Second, I am told that the U.S. agreed to an Iranian demand to allow an international Red Crescent team interview the five Iranian officials in U.S. custody after the Jan. 10 raid in Irbil. This is a serious but understandable U.S. concession. Among the Red Crescent team is an Iranian national, and the chances that he reports directly to the Iranian government are very high. “He will tell the captives to shut up, hang tight, and soon they’ll be free,” my Iranian sources tell me. But my bets are still on the Nimitz – and on the proximity of the anniversary of Operation Praying Mantis, when the Iranians tasted the steel and cordite of a determined U.S. navy. Unless Iran already has nuclear warheads, a direct military confrontation with the United States would most likely provoke a popular uprising against the regime. And retaining power is the one thing that Ayatollah Khamenei and his clerical cohorts actually care about. |
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |
| #10 Britain may be weak, but our George is a "loose cannon" backed by the Eisenhower, the Stennis and pretty soon the Nimitz..........you never know what Georgie may ask from those three little boats to do and we know that they will do it.............. |
| Posted by: Spuse the Elder7296 2007-04-05 21:02 |
| #9 #1 everyone knows belaPelosi is a buffoon, not to be taken seriously. She's like the crazy aunt in the attic. AhMAD, Khamenei, and the other chess players got what they wanted with this round. They found the U.S. isolated and the EUs (like Russia and China) putting commercial interests ahead of anything serious. So, over the nuke issue, it's Iran v. the U.S. They will wait out George W. in hopes that a liberal US president is elected. W. needs to take decisive action on Iran before he leaves office. A possibility of which I put at about 25%. |
| Posted by: Captain America 2007-04-05 18:58 |
| #7 It's my understanding that most western military folk are trained to say whatever they are told to say. It makes sense if you think about it because what falls out is that anything said is easily denied later. I hold absolutely nothing against them because I would do the same thing. Say what they want you to say now or say it after they drill holes in you makes no difference to them but a lot of difference to me. |
| Posted by: gorb 2007-04-05 17:58 |
| #6 It would be intersting to have Blair give a speach now how he gave Ahmanidjad until x hour to release the hostages or else and the man complied on time. Leave Ahmanidjad looking as if he were the weak one playing tough. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2007-04-05 16:59 |
| #5 France is as much of an ally to the English and the US as Iran is. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2007-04-05 15:57 |
| #4 “C’est vraiment une affaire qui ne passe pas outre-Manche,” the French center-left daily Le Monde commented on Tuesday. Translated into plain English, the French observed (accurately) that nobody on the correct side of the English Channel could give a rat’s behind about the fate of the British hostages. They had too much (commercially) at stake. Hey, Benny! (SteveS will know who I mean) How's this for supporting an ally and fellow member of the EU, huh? Is this how France reacts when any of their soldiers are kidnapped or their forces threatened? I seem to recall some rather, ah, "reactionary" responses the French used in Africa not to long ago. France, a loyal ally? I spit in their general direction. No, I take that back. I spit in their specific direction. |
| Posted by: FOTSGreg 2007-04-05 15:28 |
| #3 Timmerman puts on a brave face in this column, but I remain skeptical that this fiasco-- played out, I expect, mainly for a domestic and Middle Eastern audience-- was anything other than a triumph for the MMs. I'm not sure that it matters all that much what the behind-the-scenes, "real" reasons were for the Iranians releasing their hostages, even if Timmerman is 100% correct; what matters most is perception, and the perception throughout the MME is almost certainly that Iran succeeded in tweaking the noses of its Anglosphere adversaries with complete impunity. That they did, along with goading the British-- from the man on the street all the way up to the guy at #10 Downing-- into a trembling national fit of "Oh dear, oh dear, whatever shall we do????" anxiety; extracting "confessions" from their captives (all 15, apparently) with no more evident duress than bowls of pistachios and sweets; got them to perform perfectly, in their ill-fitting polyester suits, at the press extravaganza staged for their release; and even got them-- God save the Queen-- to publicly thank their captors for their "forgiveness". I think damn near anyone could understand and forgive coerced "confessions" mumbled through broken teeth by bloodied and beaten men trembling with exhaustion and terror; but my God, these kids-- I won't call them Sailors or Marines-- were actually cheery. Sorry, but I think Britain took a BIG hit in this episode. MMs 15, Britain 0. That's my take. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2007-04-05 15:28 |
| #2 Within four days of their capture on March 23, the fifteen Britons were split up into smaller groups and held in different areas, Iranian sources told me. This was a lesson learned from the 1979-1981 hostage crisis, when all 55 U.S. hostages were initially kept in one place, prompting the failed U.S. effort to rescue them. I believe I said just exactly this as a reason why the Brits did not feel they could conduct an effective rescue operation a few days ago (amongst other speculations). |
| Posted by: FOTSGreg 2007-04-05 15:22 |
| #1 The thing is, if Iran can spin things to give Pelosi credit for the release it makes the Brits and George W look weak, helps weaken the west by strengthening the appeasers in the USA and makes Iran look generous while still tweek the nose of the great powers. For Iran it's a win-win-win and I would expect Ahmanijad to mention Pelosi at some point. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2007-04-05 14:36 |