Cole in Salon: Iran's New Hostage Crisis
My column, "Iran's new hostage crisis," is out at Salon.com.
Excerpt:
' The capture by Iranian Revolutionary Guards of 15 British sailors and marines on March 23 has set off a diplomatic crisis and mobilized the public in both Britain and Iran . . . Why would the Iranian leadership risk such a confrontation over a minor issue? . . .
With Iran facing huge challenges at home (an economy in tatters) and abroad (mounting pressure over its nuclear program), Ahmadinejad and his reluctant patron, the Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei, desperately needed a diversion. . .
Ahmadinejad's alienation of potential Iranian supporters such as Russia and China with his regular undignified rants against Israel and the West has cost Iran dearly at the United Nations Security Council, which has voted for a series of potentially serious economic sanctions in response to Tehran's attempts to enrich uranium for nuclear energy. Iranians, who saw how oil-rich Iraq was reduced to a fourth-world country by U.N. sanctions in the 1990s, are anxious about their own fate.
Ahmadinejad's domestic and foreign policy failures have emboldened his enemies, especially Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president (1989-1997) who now heads the clerical "senate" called the Expediency Council. Rafsanjani has taken to openly denouncing Ahmadinejad's policies. Even the president's own right-wing supporters are threatening to vote down his budget, which contains another 20 percent increase in public spending.
A lot of Iranians could not care less about Khomeini's clerical ideology at this point, but most are still intensely nationalistic. Given all the student protests against hard-line policies in recent times, it must be sweet indeed for the ayatollahs and Ahmadinejad to see universities become the sites of anti-British denunciations. '
See also Gary Kamiya's Last Chance for Middle East Peace
and
Glenn Greenwald on persistent lies on the Right about US public opinion regarding withdrawing from Iraq.
Labels: Iran
posted by Juan Cole @ 4/03/2007 06:35:00 AM
5 Comments:
This is indeed the last chance for peace. The American Likudists have bagged the Arab Initiative's offer for normalization, and trying to expand the occupation and the humiliation, not only maintain it.
This is not so. The Arab patience has already run out, and the initiative has run its course after 5 years.
The short/medium range missiles now surrounding Israel can take out its military and industrial infrastructure in an hour. If that is the only solution, then be it.
My take is that Iran will not give up enrichment under the terms offered, which are essentially that Iran give up enrichment for free, to get the opportunity to negotiate giving up other things for trade and technology. And that Iran would prefer confrontation to accepting those terms, even though Iran doesn't want confrontation in and of itself.
The security council has signaled that it is willing to confront Iran, which means that Iran is now in a confrontation. (I don't know for sure how the US got Russia and China to go along with this resolution, but it had nothing to do with Ahmadinejad's speeches. Most likely it involved missile defense in Russia's case and Korea in China's case).
These sailors are cards Iran intends to use in the confrontation that Iran now sees as probable if not unavoidable. I expect them to still be in Iran when the 60 day deadline for the current enrichment resolution is up. Unless Britain convinces them that holding hostages won't be necessary.
The ship boarded certainly was not going from Iran to Iraq. My best guess is that cargo ships destined for Iran were being inspected either in a show that Britain could hamper Iranian shipping or while searching for incoming or outgoing weapons.
Off topic-
There is a great post on The Carpetbagger Report from a couple of days ago about the mainstream media's (specifically Time magazine's) ignoring the prosecutor purge scandal.
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10367.html
What explains the failure of the mainstream media to cover the purge scandal for so long, and so many other scandals? Do you think somebody just set up newspaper editors to cheat on their wives, and threatened to tell if the editors wouldn’t play ball when they come back some day and ask for something?
It wouldn’t be that hard to do, when you think about it. People wouldn’t talk about it.
Also check out a new post on my blog.
While Dr. Cole's broad remarks about the British "hostages" are somewhat relevant, it makes more sense to situate the incident within the "intelligence wars" context--the "disappearance" of Ali Reza Askari in Turkey, and the US attempt to Kidnap/arrest Mohammad Jaafari and Minojahar Frouzanda in Arbil.. (see Cockburn's piece on CounterPunch or even the Debka website)
Shiite Power Block Takes Shape Dr. Babak Rahimi examines the increasingly cooperative relationship between Sadr and Sistani.
That development and the relatively cordial relationship that Britain and Iran seem to have forged in the hostage release can be seen as an Iranian inspired response to the troop surge and increasing threat from the Bush administration. If indeed the surge was intended as part of a strategy to divide the Shiite factions in Iraq and help secure lines of communication in the event of an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, that strategy seems to have backfired.
Iran has strengthened its position and so as Sadr
Post a Comment
<< Home