Iran Hostage Crisis — Deja Vu
Nine days later Iran is defiantly holding 15 British sailors and marines hostage. Iran said the Revolutionary Guards arrested the crews of two boats from HMS Cornwall after they trespassed into their waters. The Royal Navy has shown photographic proof that the boats were operating in Iraqi waters. This standoff is eerily similar to the original Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979. The American hostages were held for 444 days and led to President Jimmy Carter (thankfully) loosing his re-election bid to Ronald Reagan. These events are 28 years apart, but there is one major similarity; President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
American hostage in Tehran, 1979, with Ahmadinejad
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 2007
Ahmadinejad has been ratcheting up the rhetoric, the threats and the insanity for some time now. This latest smoke and mirrors stunt is once again designed to distract the world from the real issue of his developing nuclear weapons. The longer this crisis goes on the closer he gets.
Flashback to 1979: President Jimmy Carter applied economic and diplomatic pressure on Iran: oil imports from Iran were ended on November 12, 1979, and through the issuance of Executive Order 12170, around USD 8 billion of Iranian assets in the U.S. were frozen by the Office of Foreign Assets Control on November 14, 1979. Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Khomeini and Iran didn’t even blink. This is the same failed approach that the United Nations is taking on Iran’s nuclear program.
Prime Minister Tony Blair has said that that Great Britain will not negotiate and I wonder how Maggie Thatcher would have reacted. When Argentina invaded the British Falkland Islands in April of 1982, she immediately launched a Naval task force resulting in Argentina surrendering in June.
In comparison, in the days before Reagan took office, Algerian diplomat Abdulkarim Ghuraib, opened negotiations between the U.S. and Iran. This resulted in the “Algiers Accords” of January 19, 1981, which entailed Iran’s commitment to free the hostages immediately with Jimmy Carter agreeing to this important clause: “The United States pledges that it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran’s internal affairs.” Other provisions of the Algiers Accords were the unfreezing of $8 billion of Iranian assets and immunity from lawsuits Iran might have faced.
Let this be a warning to all those Democrats who believe the U.S. should negotiate with terrorist regimes. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi plans to visit Syria next week to meet with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. The visit will make Pelosi the most senior U.S. official ever to meet with President Assad. Pelosi’s visit to Syria would come as the United States has severed high-level contacts with Assad’s government.
The administration recalled the U.S. ambassador to Damascus after the February 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri in Lebanon. There has been very little high- or mid-level U.S. contact with Syria since then.
So it’s deja vu all over again: negotiate and capitulate.
Posted: 0025PT 04/01/07
autone.wordpress.com
An Angeleno's View of the World 
Las Malvinas son Argentinas
Angelano, are you implying that military action should be taken against Iran? Well, as things show, your “wish” will come true, but do you not see how this military conflict between the US/UK and Iran will have dire consequences to the whole world? To your family, your own self?
You write: Ahmadinejad has been ratcheting up the rhetoric, the threats and the insanity for some time now. This latest smoke and mirrors stunt is once again designed to distract the world from the real issue of his developing nuclear weapons. The longer this crisis goes on the closer he gets.
Do you have any understanding of how far Tehran is from creating nuclear weapons? You make it sound that is gonna happen any day day now. And which rhetoric is Ahmadinejad “been racheting up”? Did you hear the guy say anything the last few days?
Since you call yourself a “writer who hears everything” perhaps you might like to “hear ” this one?
http://www.signs-of-the-times.org/articles/show/129553-%27Hostage+Crisis%27+Or+End+Game%3F
Scandalous, Pelosi’s visit to Syria.
Your analogy is correct.
One thing stumps me. Of course, I do not know the situation at the time of capture. It may be they were outgunned so that they had no choice to surrender. But that woman and those two chaps who confess on TV they were in Iranian territorial waters… they look just fine and dandy, not pressured at all. Compare that with the images of the shot down British pilots during the first Gulf War… most of them looked badly beaten up. So I do have the impression THESE British troops are just wussies.
Seems the good brits were harrassing fisherman with “inspection boardings” based on this little geographic fiction cooked up by Tony B:
How I know Blair faked Iran map by Craig Murry, published in Britain’s own Daily Mail.
http://www.signs-of-the-times.org/articles/show/129611-How+I+know+Blair+faked+Iran+map
Comes with pictures and everything. Here’s a nice chunk of quote:
But what about the map the Ministry of Defence produced on Tuesday, with territorial boundaries set out by a clear red line, and the co-ordinates of the incident marked in relation to it?
I have news for you. Those boundaries are fake. They were drawn up by the MoD. They are not agreed or recognised by any international authority.
Like most senior Royal Navy officers, Commodore Nick Lambert has great reserves of professional expertise and common sense. The Coalition task force commander was aboard HMS Cornwall when 15 Royal Navy personnel serving on the frigate were seized at gunpoint by Iranian forces on March 23.
The Navy states the 14 men and one woman were on a routine patrol in rigid inflatables off Iraqi shores – Iran insists they were in its waters illegally.
A few hours after the 15 were seized, Cdre Lambert said: ‘There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that they were in Iraqi territorial waters. Equally, the Iranians may well claim that they were in their territorial waters. The extent and definition of territorial waters in this part of the world is very complicated.’
And his predecessor in command of the task force, Commodore Peter Lockwood of the Royal Australian Navy, said last October: ‘No maritime border has been agreed upon by the countries.’
Both officers told the truth. It is the burial of this truth by No 10 spin doctors, and Tony Blair’s remark that he is ‘utterly certain’ the incident took place within Iraqi territorial limits, that has escalated this from an incident to a crisis. Blair is being fatuous.
How can you be certain which side of a boundary you are when that boundary has never been drawn?
I am best known as the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, but from 1989 to 1992 I headed the Foreign Office’s maritime section. This included responsibility for territorial sea claims and for negotiating our own maritime boundaries. The expertise of the Royal Navy was invaluable.
You really should read the whole thing.
Just FYI- the GOP ALSO had a delegation in Syria last week. Wrong-headed by all, maybe. “Scandalous” on the part of Pelosi, hardly.
The story has been covered (or at least mentioned) all over the place- including Fox
http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Apr01/0,4670,SyriaHouseVisit,00.html
Well Alana… read this–> http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/04/exclusive_iran_.html
It appears the Iranians are simply using stall tactics until they can achieve their goal of nuclear weapons capability. 2009 soon enough for you?
Oh, it what about the fact that the White House administration asked Nancy Pelosi NOT to go to Syria? In fact, strongly urged her not to. What message does that send out? That she is going to do whatever she damn well pleases? Great! Just what we need is another arrogant politician! http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=2995828&page=1
Hi Freevolition,
read this: Kenneth C. Brill, the director of the National Counterproliferation Center, created to track programs like Iran’s and North Korea’s, cautioned against accepting at face value Tehran’s recent claims about producing enriched uranium and plans to produce 54,000 centrifuges.
“It will take many years,” he said, “to build that many.”
from: http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/17/africa/web..php
And the point right now is not Iran’s motives it seems, but that of the US, UK and Israel’s.
Who is the murderer in the company? When was the last time Iran invaded a foreign country? Do you think they are going to create a nuclear bomb and attack any country? The above mentioned governments have been murdering innocent people daily for years and they DO have weapons of mass distraction in their possession. Don’t we have to worry more about that?
Didn’t the US government started a war against innocent people on the pretext that Iraq had WMD? Wasn’t it all over the news? Didn’t it turn out to be a hoax? Isn’t the case with Iran now a deja vu?
And the fact that Iran has certainly not made it any secret that they intend to wipe Israel off the map carries no merit in your estimation?
Wussies, Outlaw Mike? Oh, I don’t know. No way for us to know whether a gun may have been held to a comrade’s head off camera. There are other means of persuasion other than a physical beating. I find it difficult to believe the Royal Marines could be wussies.
Freevilition, do you believe everything that the media says? Read here:
http://www.signs-of-the-times.org/articles/show/124774-Putting+Words+in+Ahmadinejad%27s+Mouth
[quote]In this frightening mess in the Middle East, let’s get one thing straight. Iran is not threatening Israel with destruction. Iran’s president has not threatened any action against Israel. Over and over, we hear that Iran is clearly “committed to annihilating Israel” because the “mad” or “reckless” or “hard-line” President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly threatened to destroy Israel But every supposed quote, every supposed instance of his doing so, is wrong.
In this frightening mess in the Middle East, let’s get one thing straight. Iran is not threatening Israel with destruction. Iran’s president has not threatened any action against Israel. Over and over, we hear that Iran is clearly “committed to annihilating Israel” because the “mad” or “reckless” or “hard-line” President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly threatened to destroy Israel But every supposed quote, every supposed instance of his doing so, is wrong.
The most infamous quote, “Israel must be wiped off the map”, is the most glaringly wrong. In his October 2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never used the word “map” or the term “wiped off”. According to Farsi-language experts like Juan Cole and even right-wing services like MEMRI, what he actually said was “this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”
What did he mean? In this speech to an annual anti-Zionist conference, Mr. Ahmadinejad was being prophetic, not threatening. He was citing Imam Khomeini, who said this line in the 1980s (a period when Israel was actually selling arms to Iran, so apparently it was not viewed as so ghastly then). Mr. Ahmadinejad had just reminded his audience that the Shah’s regime, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein had all seemed enormously powerful and immovable, yet the first two had vanished almost beyond recall and the third now languished in prison. So, too, the “occupying regime” in Jerusalem would someday be gone. His message was, in essence, “This too shall pass.”[/quote]
You might like to read the whole thing.