Iran Up to Old Tricks

I'm no fan of George Soros and his anti-American leftist agenda, but Iran seems to have no problem of arresting and holding Iranian-Americans, claiming that they're spying and/or formenting anti-government activities.

Iran has imprisoned an Iranian-American affiliated with George Soros' Open Society Institute, the foundation said yesterday, marking the fourth dual citizen to be detained in Iran in recent months.

Open Society Institute, which promotes democratic governance and human rights, said Tehran-based social scientist Kian Tajbakhsh was imprisoned around May 11.

The other dual citizens arrested, detained or otherwise kept from leaving Iran include Haleh Esfandiari, a 67-year-old scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Parnaz Azima, a reporter for U.S.-funded Radio Farda; and a third person whom the U.S. government has not identified.

Iran has accused the Soros group of promoting "soft revolution" there - a term Iranian officials use to refer to a perceived U.S. plot to use intellectuals and others inside Iran to undermine the Islamic state.

Iran has seen that kidnapping/holding foreigners works - just look at the Royal Navy standoff. These four aren't even in the military and will be used just as surely as pawns in the mad mullahs diplomatic maneuverings against the West.

They can simply accuse these four of plotting against the government and demand action, regardless of whether there is actual proof. Proof is irrelevant as Iran surely knows that they don't need proof when bluster will suffice.

Stage Managing

Many years ago, I was a stage manager for several high school productions and worked on theater productions in college as well. I directed folks on stage as to their placement, designed and built sets and lighting schemes and ensured that everyone was operating in a safe environment. So, let's just say I know a thing or two about stage managing.

So, when Iran complains about how the British are stage managing the return of the 15 Britons, I can't help but chuckle just a bit. What exactly were the Iranians doing when they released videos, letters, and then conducted photo ops showing the 15 purportedly admitting to being in Iranian waters, and then urging Britain to get out of Iraq? Or, how about the additional photo ops showing the British receiving gifts including hijabs for the female sailor - Ms. Turney - and suits without ties for the men along with meeting Ahmadinejad. No messages there, right?

Pot. Meet Kettle.

Others blogging: Hot Air and Wizbang.

Homecoming

The 15 British service members captured by Iran on March 23 have arrived back in Great Britain. That's got to be a relief to the families and friends of those 15.

Now, the questions begin in earnest. What really happened and what were the fateful decisions that were made that resulted in the capture of the 15? Was their a failure to follow the rules of engagement or did the Royal Navy follow them?

Who won and who lost as a result of the confrontation? I would lean towards Iran winning the confrontation because they've been the ones playing the media brilliantly despite the fact that their propaganda was in violation of international law.

Ahmadinejad may have won, though there are reports that suggest that others inside the Iranian government forced the release because they didn't want to get into a military encounter with the British and/or US when they know they'd get pasted heavily. It was a timing thing - they don't want to get ahead of themselves before their own capabilities are such that they can produce a standoff weapon that would make anyone think twice about military action.

Tony Blair was a loser in this. He looked weak and didn't send the right signals to the Iranians and the rest of the world that they would take decisive action if Iran didn't immediately release the 15. More to the point, the British looked weak because a closer look at the assets at their disposal shows that they were incapable of mounting a major military action on their own to rescue their service members.

Blair says he holds no ill will. He might not, but the British military should. The Iranians are certainly keeping score on this front and see that they were able to get the British to bend in the breeze.

The Royal Navy lost. What were the rules of engagement and why didn't the support ships take action to save their crew? Has the fleet been so degraded that they cannot handle missions and protect themselves from what can only be regarded as piracy?

Blair denies that the British sent a letter of apology for the incident. It may take some time, but we may eventually learn how and why the 15 were released, and I doubt it had anything to do with a gesture of goodwill on the part of the Iranians.

Meanwhile, the US is considering Iranian requests to visit five Iranians being held inside Iraq. The five were captured in Irbil and are accused of assisting the insurgency.

UPDATE:
Hot Air has a good roundup including questions over the photos taken of the 15 before they left Iran for Britain. Several of the Brits didn't smile for the pictures, and it's curious that their images were cropped from some of the photos. Journalistic and editorial choices were made, but some are lauding those Brits who didn't smile while some are wondering just how much of an effort was made to resist the Iranian demands to apologize.

UPDATE:
Jay Tea has a very good piece on how there are ramifications to the Iran-Britain situation that will not simply be papered over by apologies. Iran's mad mullahs do not work that way.

The precedent has been set: Iran has kidnapped sailors, kept them prisoner, denied them their Geneva Convention rights, used them as PR props, and then let them go in a grand ceremony -- and the world is trampling all over itself to pat them on the back. "Consequences? Why, those would be mean-spirited and punitive and not at all conducive to civil discourse! Besides, everyone is safe, so what's the problem?"

He also makes a point I've stated from early on - this incident gives Iran the mojo to claim Iraqi waters in the Shat al Arab as their own.

Iran has tried this before, and they'll learn from the experience how to do it even better the next time and the demands will be more than simply an apology. As Michelle Malkin notes, there are specific requirements for US soldiers, sailors, and Marines to resist as much as they are capable of doing for as long as possible. The US Chief of Naval Operations was quite blunt in saying that there was no way US sailors would have been taken without a fight.

That compares with the British military who dismissed questions that the Britons behaved improperly.

There are questions over how the British responded once they were in Iranian custody. Some of that will undoubtedly related back to training and preparation for the possibility of being captured. That will reflect back on the Admirals and Generals, not just on the 15. The questions will certainly intensify and take on a life of their own, not to mention become politicized, especially considering that the Royal Navy is continuing operations in the Persian Gulf and is deployed around the world.

What is the price of liberty? That's what Pajamas Media asks, and apparently Pat Dollard says it was Iranian the Iranian “diplomat” Jalal Sharafi, aka Mohammed Javad Sharaf-Zadeh, who was traded for the 15 British sailors. Eli Lake has more. As much as some on the left think that the US didn't have a role in securing the freedom of the 15 Brits, it appears that there was a quid pro quo involved. Too bad the Administration chose to provide assistance by releasing someone who provides assistance and material support to terrorists who are attacking US forces in Iraq. That said, I can understand how they could justify the release because he was a diplomat and civilized nations are supposed to respect certain rules and honor diplomatic immunity. Too bad the Iranians laugh at the idea of diplomatic immunity.

He did, however, warn of giving into the demands of hostage takers. "Once people start taking hostages or kidnapping folks on the high seas and then are rewarded for it by getting some kind of political concession or some other thing of value, that would be unfortunate," he said.

An adviser to the National Security Council and the State Department in the Reagan administration, Michael Ledeen, who himself was an interlocutor with the Iranians when America secretly sold arms to free Americans taken by Iran's proxies, Hezbollah, said yesterday, "There is always a quid pro quo, we don't know yet what it was."

Not all Iran watchers, however, believe that Iran got the best of the exchange yesterday. The deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Patrick Clawson, said yesterday, "I don't think the British gave them anything."

Mr. Clawson said, "The Iranians got very little for this.

Very little is a whole lot more than they should have ever gotten in this whole mess of their own designs.

Iran Continues Agitprop Campaign While Holding Britons

The Iranians are continuing their propaganda campaign, releasing yet more videos purporting to show that the captured Britons are pointing to locations on maps claiming that they were inside Iranian waters when they were picked up by the Iranians. The Iranians are claiming that all 15 captured have admitted to being inside Iranian waters.

Given how effective those videos are, one has to wonder why Iran would stop airing them. Maybe it has something to do with the British government completely caving in to the Iranian demands?

Iran’s state-run radio on Monday cited what it called “positive changes” in Britain’s negotiating stance and said because of those, television stations would not broadcast additional videos of British sailors’ confessions.

The state-run radio did not detail what it meant by positive changes, nor quote any officials by name. A state-run TV station had said earlier Monday that all 15 British sailors and marines held captive by the country had confessed to illegally entering Iranian waters.

The British government response has been quite lacking, which is in stark contrast to events 25 years ago. On this day 25 years ago, the British fought back against the Argentine government that invaded the Falkland Islands. At the time, the British were supposed to be incapable of fighting a war thousands of miles away and with limited logistics. While they suffered serious casualties when several ships were hit with Argentine missiles, they did push Argentina to surrender and retook the Islands.

UPDATE:
The rumor mill is certainly flying today on this story. There is a report that the US military is preparing airstrikes against Iran for this Friday. How about providing the time and exact locations while you're at it? Iran's busy claiming that the US is already violating Iranian airspace with overflights. Well, this one is just a bit more believable.

"Two US aircraft trespassed into Iranian airspace northwest of (the port city of) Abadan before flying southwest into
Iraq," a Revolutionary Guards commander in Abadan identified only as Colonel Aqili was quoted as saying by the Al-Alam channel's website.

"The planes left white vapour trails, attracting the local people's attention," he said, without elaborating on when the alleged incursion took place.

The incident happened close to Iran's border with Iraq, where the US and British military are deployed in force, he said.

A US military spokesman told AFP that he had investigated the Iranian military's claim and found no evidence to support it.

"There is nothing that we saw that would indicate that that happened," he told AFP.

Then, there's the report that Britain has changed its stance and that a deal is in the works to secure the release of the 15.

The Iran-Britain Crisis Continues

The crisis continues, though there are reports that a deal may be in the works. It figures that the British would issue a non-apology apology. Excuse me while I wonder about that a bit. The British did nothing wrong by patrolling inside Iraqi waters, while the Iranians are the ones who illegally entered Iraqi waters to capture the British service members.

The only folks who should be issuing an apology are the Iranians - and then some. They're the ones who have been violating international law, illegally holding the Britons, and yet they're the ones who are pushing the British to apologize. No good can come from a British apology.

Lots of folks agree with that assessment. Mark Steyn for one. Blue Crab Boulevard and Michael van der Galien have more, including President Bush's call for Iran to release the 15 unconditionally.

Iran, of course, calls the American and British efforts

Hot Air has a good roundup. The British got themselves into this mess because of downsizing and demilitarization. It's the same problem the US has been facing for the past couple of years. The so-called peace dividend following the end of the Cold War has proven to be a costly one. Ed Morrissey has more on the demilitarization aspects.

The sad fact is that the British are already well down the path to groveling for the return of their service members. The Iranians will be sure to exploit this as well. The Iranians are still threatening to put the 15 on trial, which continues to be a violation of international law. Of course, anyone watching this situation developing would know that international law only applies to certain countries while others get to skate.

On Thursday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip that the case had entered a legal investigation phase, state television reported.

Ansari also reiterated Iran's stance that the British government could resolve the crisis by admitting the sailors entered Iranian waters.

"If the U.K. government admits its mistake and apologizes to Iran for its naval personnel's trespassing of Iranian territorial waters, the issue can be easily settled," he said.

The diplomat claimed the British government had escalated the crisis by taking the matter to the U.N. Security Council rather than resolving it on a bilateral basis.

Let's examine this issue a bit deeper. The British were operating in Iraqi waters in the Shaat al Arab waterway. The Iran-Iraq border in this area has been disputed before, and was one of the reasons for the 1980-1988 bloodletting known as the Iran-Iraq war that killed more than a million people.

The Iran Iraq border in the region is set, and if the British concede that their position was in Iranian waters when it wasn't, that puts the Iraqis at a disadvantage going forward as the waterway is their only terminus on the Persian Gulf. That too may be part of the Iranian endgame.

Neo-neocon wonders who the real audience is for the eventual show trial should it come to that.

UPDATE:
Go figure that protests would take place outside the British embassy in Tehran. Staged? Count on it. Oh, and it wasn't exactly peaceful either:

About 200 students threw rocks and firecrackers at the British Embassy on Sunday, calling for the expulsion of the country's ambassador because of the standoff over Iran's capture of 15 British sailors and marines.

Several dozen policeman prevented the protesters from entering the embassy compound, although a few briefly scaled a fence outside the compound's walls before being pushed back, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.

The Iranians are playing a very dangerous game and the British do not appear in a position to take a hard line, though they realize that some actions might go beyond what the Iranians can safely assume will result in no tangible repercussions for the regime.

UPDATE:
Iran has released yet more agitprop. This stuff may be transparent propaganda, but it's effective to the weak-kneed.

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.

More Agitprop Released By Iran

Day Seven.

Iran continues to release video of various sailors and Royal Marines captured inside Iraqi waters. They repeat the Iranian party line - that the British had crossed into Iranian waters and that they call for the British government to apologize.

Funny thing is that the actual evidence shows that the Iranians are the ones who not only crossed the border between Iran and Iraq, but captured the British sailors and Marines inside Iraqi waters.

The British continue to stand by their evidence and assertions that their forces were inside Iraqi waters when the incident occurred, and the Iranians continue to trot out the sailors and Marines who are under duress and were likely coerced to make statements against British interests.

Verum Serum makes some interesting observations about the incident and video released by the Iranians. Hot Air has more as well.

UPDATE:
EU Referendum wonders at how the British got themselves into this mess in the first place given the video released supposedly showing lightly armed Iranian forces overtaking the British. What exactly were the British rules of engagement and where was the British supporting forces when this was happening?

[A]s more details emerge of the snatch, it has emerged that only two boats were initially used by the Iranians. Video footage has been released by Iranian television showing close-ups of one of the vessels, a small speedboat with a crew of three, armed with what appears to be a single 12.7mm machine gun.

This was hardly a formidable force and one which, with the right assets in place and an alert overwatch, could easily have been seen off. Given the enormous repercussions of the kidnapping – to say nothing of the national humiliation – questions as to how the British service personnel were so easily ambushed now become increasingly urgent.

UPDATE:
Was the HMS Cornwall ordered not to interfere and engage the Iranian forces that captured 15 British servicemembers? That's the implication of this report.

The latest report is that the Britons were ready to fight off their abductors. Certainly their escorting ship, HMS Cornwall, could have blown the Iranian naval vessel out of the water. However, at the last minute the British Ministry of Defense ordered the Cornwall not to fire, and her captain and crew were forced to watch their shipmates led away into captivity.

There was a question whether the Blair government would end up leaving Britain with a navy too small to protect its shores. Now it seems to want a navy that can't even protect its own sailors.

Heads should be rolling at the Royal Navy headquarters for this debacle. Who gave the order preventing the ship from engaging mortal threats to its boarding parties? This is micromanagement of a conflict thousands of miles away, and this is the kind of nonsense that Democrats are trying to foist upon President Bush and the military through their imposition of deadlines, timetables, and other such blather in appropriation bills. This is what a conflict looks like when you have lawyers trying to determine rules of engagement from afar when the very real threat moves inside the decision making cycle.

Instead of taking on the Iranian force when it was possible to do so, the Royal Navy ceded the field of battle and instead saw its own captured and paraded on television as propaganda.

UPDATE:
Those questions about the legitimacy of the the letters released by Iran purporting to be from the captive Britons are now being raised by the AP. Hot Air has more, including reports that US forces apparently killed an Iranian soldier inside Iraq while the Iranian was in the process of firing RPGs.

Others blogging: Heavy Handed Politics and Blue Star Chronicles.

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Readying for Paper Cuts

The British don't appear to have a military resolution to securing the release of the 15 sailors and Royal Marines being held by Iran, so they're going to the UN to secure a dreaded resolution.

The Iranians are adamant that the British must admit that they were in Iranian waters, despite having no proof other than the coerced statements made by the sailors and Marines under duress, before the 15 could be released.

Iran farts in the UN's general direction. They couldn't care less what the UN says, since they've routinely ignored everything coming from the UN relating to their nuclear program. They ignore international law, including the Geneva Convention.

And yet, this is the big hope for the British government?

Iran knows this and is seeing just how far they can push on this matter, and will apply the same kind of logic and pressure to the more important issue of nuclear weapons development. The Iranians are pushing the envelope and are seeing just how much they can get away with, and are jumping over those boundaries at will.

No one in the West seems willing or capable of mounting a response. The British don't have the military assets in place to mount a raid, though they could probably put a hurting on an Iranian oil refinery or two with missile strikes, but that wouldn't get their forces back any sooner. A rescue operation is far more difficult than simply lobbing missiles at a stationary target.

The US has the forces in theater, but lacks the willpower because of the persistent ankle biting by the Left - both here in the US and around the world.

The Iranians are right on one point. The British have miscalculated. They miscalculated by not taking military action right at the outset to stop the Iranians from taking the 15 back into Iranian waters, and then on to Tehran. The British response at this point is reactive, not proactive. They must do more to shape events instead of reacting to Iranian demands.

Meanwhile, this ploy may still be the work of the mad mullahs to secure the release of five Iranians captured by US forces in Irbil, Iraq who were providing support to insurgents/terrorists inside Iraq.

The Russians seem to think that the US is ready to strike Iran at any moment, but consider the source. The Russians are in cahoots with the Iranians - having provided them with military assets, not to mention technical and equipment assistance on the Iranian nuclear program. They want to try and publicly engage the US media and chattering class to stop another one of their client states from ending up on the ash heap of history (and losing another source of hard currency to boot).

Confederate Yankee has more on this aspect.

UPDATE:
So, we are now treated to another piece of agitprop courtesy of the Iranians. They're claiming to have produced another letter by Turney, which purports to question why the British are still operating inside Iraq. And the latest garbage from Iran is just that. A new letter claims that Turney is calling for the Brits to get out of Iraq.

The Iranian embassy in London has released a second letter it says is from British captive Faye Turney in which she calls on Britain to start withdrawing troops from Iraq. "Isn't it time for us to start withdrawing our forces from Iraq and let them determine their own future?" said the letter, addressed to the British parliament.

That's right, a captured soldier in Iranian custody is questioning why other British troops in Iraq are still there when Iran is an interested party in ensuring chaos in Iraq that inures benefit to the Iranian mullahs. No, there's no Iranian agenda in this whatsoever. None.

As if this has anything to do with the reason that Iran invaded Iraqi water to capture the 15 British servicemembers? The Iranians are playing this for all its worth and no one is calling them on this nonsense. The British government has responded quite inadequately, and every day this drags on puts the British in a worse position.

Holding Britain Hostage

The British government is making good on providing proof that the Iranians violated international law, invaded Iraqi waters to take hostage 15 Royal Marines and sailors, and continues to violate the Geneva Convention by holding them and threatening to put them on trial for espionage.

The Royal Navy took the highly unusual step of making public charts, photographs and previously secret navigational coordinates purportedly proving that the sailors were 1.7 nautical miles inside Iraqi waters when they were seized.

The Navy’s disclosure was only the beginning of a coordinated response by some of the most senior British officials, including Mr. Blair and Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, who told parliament that Britain would “be imposing a freeze on all official bilateral business with Iran until the situation is resolved.”

While the impact of that prohibition was unclear, it seemed to reflect the first formal reprisal by Britain in response to the seizure of its personnel.

Iran responded by insisting that the British sailors were inside Iranian waters when they were seized. At the same time, though, a Turkish television station, CNN-Turk, quoted the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as saying that Iran may allow Turkish diplomats to visit the captured Britons.

The Royal Navy rejected two sets of coordinates provided by Iran as evidence of its claim that the British sailors had strayed into Iranian territorial waters.

The British government provides charts and other detailed information proving their forces were inside Iraqi waters at the time. Iran simply insists they were in Iranian waters. The Times discounts the British claims and gives equal weight to the Iranians who have provided absolutely no evidence to support their contention.

I'm sure the Iranians are quivering in their boots when hearing about the freezing of bilateral business with Iran. Oh, I'm sure that will hurt. Like a papercut perhaps, but it wont get the sailors released, and it certainly wont instill any fear in the mad mullahs who see nothing but weakness from the Brits. I've said it before, but restraint is often confused with weakness - and that's a bad place to be in. The Iranians are taking the British reluctance to put force on the table to be a sign of weakness, which will further embolden the Iranians to taking more reckless and dangerous acts.

The US, meanwhile, is continuing to conduct naval exercises in the Gulf with two carrier battle groups. While the British may not have the naval or ground forces in place to mount a raid on Iran, the US certainly does. Iran is playing an extremely dangerous game and the mad mullahs are betting the West caves. To date, they've been right. The Iranians can wait out the US as they watch Congressional Democrats set timetables that give everyone in the region a deadline by which they simply have to survive in order to thrive and expand their operations.

UPDATE:
Seems that Iran may be ready to release the sole female British sailor being held. The Iranians are also set to release video confessions, as though confessions through coersion mean anything not to mention that they too are prohibited by the Geneva Convention (Prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity).

UPDATE:
The Iranians have released their agitprop, including a video that shows Faye Turney wearing Iranian clothes and a head wrap. She recites a note that claims that the Brits entered Iranian waters. These people are being held against their will and are being used as propaganda by the Iranian mullahs.

UPDATE:
Hot Air has the video and screencaps.

UPDATE:
Iran is pressing matters, claiming that Britain must admit the Royal Navy crossed into Iranian waters to get its sailors and Royal Marines back. The supposed release of Turney may be scuttled by the Iranians.