Iranians Again Threaten Trials For Captured 15

We're in day eight of this crisis with no sign that the release of the 15 British service members is going to end anytime soon. The Iranians are once again suggesting that they're going to put the 15 on trial.

Does anyone have any questions what the outcome of that would be? A show trial with bogus information and confessions by Britons who have been confined and coerced? That outcome would never be in doubt.

What is in doubt is the resolve of the British government to free their service members.

Iran's ambassador to Russia renewed a threat Iranian officials made earlier this week, saying 15 British sailors held by Iran could be tried for violating international law, Iran's state news agency IRNA reported Saturday.

Gholam-Reza Ansari told Russian television Vesti-24 on Friday that Iran had launched a legal investigation of the British sailors. "They will be tried if there is enough evidence of guilt," Ansari was quoted by IRNA as saying.

Britain's Foreign Office said it was checking the claim that the sailors were facing trial, but noted that the ambassador's comments didn't alter their view of what was needed to resolve the standoff.

"This doesn't change our position, we have made it perfectly clear that our personnel were in Iraqi waters and we continue to request immediate consular access to them and their immediate release," said a spokeswoman for Britain's Foreign Office, speaking on customary condition of anonymity in line with government rules.

Ansari's talk of the sailors and marines possibly being tried echoes comments made earlier this week by Ali Larijani, the main negotiator in Iran's foreign dealings.

Let's see all the international laws that the Iranians ignored in their pursuit of a confrontation. The laws and conventions broken include: invading Iraqi sovereign waters; capturing British forces in violation of the laws of the seas; threatening uniformed soldiers with espionage in contravention of the Geneva Convention; the display of the soldiers on media sources for propaganda purposes; and withholding access to those soldiers.

The Iranians claim that the British have escalated the matter by taking it to the sewing circle known as the United Nations. Heh. Iran scoffs at the UN demands on a daily basis and yet this limited British response is provocative? Right.

The only provocative acts were those taken by the Iranians when they illegally captured, and continue to hold, the 15 Britons. If they don't release the 15 now, Britain is well within its rights to not only go to the UN, but to take more aggressive actions. The problem is that the British appear to have tabled military action and that restraint is seen as weakness by the Iranians, which only further deepens the crisis.

Allah has more analysis, including potential US responses to the ongoing crisis.