Posted on 03/25/2007 12:33:29 PM PDT by MindBender26
FIFTEEN British sailors and marines arrested by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards off the coast of Iraq may be charged with spying.
A website run by associates of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, reported last night that the Britons would be put before a court and indicted.
Referring to them as “insurgents”, the site concluded: “If it is proven that they deliberately entered Iranian territory, they will be charged with espionage. If that is proven, they can expect a very serious penalty since according to Iranian law, espionage is one of the most serious offences.”
The warning followed claims by Iranian officials that the British navy personnel had been taken to Tehran, the capital, to explain their “aggressive action” in entering Iranian waters. British officials insist the servicemen were in Iraqi waters when they were held.
Related Links Blair warns Iran over seizing of British sailors Iran raises the hostage stakes Keep up the pressure The penalty for espionage in Iran is death. However, similar accusations of spying were made when eight British servicemen were detained in the same area in 2004. They were paraded blindfolded on television but did not appear in court and were freed after three nights in detention.
Iranian student groups called yesterday for the 15 detainees to be held until US forces released five Revolutionary Guards captured in Iraq earlier this year.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat, a Saudi-owned newspaper based in London, quoted an Iranian military source as saying that the aim was to trade the Royal Marines and sailors for these Guards.
The claim was backed by other sources in Tehran. “As soon as the corps’s five members are released, the Britons can go home,” said one source close to the Guards.
He said the tactic had been approved by Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, who warned last week that Tehran would take “illegal actions” if necessary to maintain its right to develop a nuclear programme.
Iran denounced a tightening of sanctions which the United Nations security council was expected to agree last night in protest at Tehran’s insistence on enriching uranium that could be used for nuclear weapons.
Lord Triesman, the Foreign Office minister, met the Iranian ambassador in London yesterday to demand that consular staff be allowed access to the Britons, one of whom is a woman. His intervention came as a senior Iranian general alleged that the Britons had confessed under interrogation to “aggression into Iran’s waters”.
Intelligence sources said any advance order for the arrests was likely to have come from Major-General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards.
Subhi Sadek, the Guards’ weekly newspaper, warned last weekend that the force had “the ability to capture a bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks”.
Safavi is known to be furious about the recent defections to the West of three senior Guards officers, including a general, and the effect of UN sanctions on his own finances.
A senior Iraqi officer appeared to back Tehran’s claim that the British had entered Iranian waters. “We were informed by Iraqi fishermen after they had returned from sea that there were British gunboats in an area that is out of Iraqi control,” said Brigadier-General Hakim Jassim, who is in charge of Iraq’s territorial waters. “We don’t know why they were there.”
Admiral Sir Alan West, the former head of the Royal Navy, dismissed suggestions that the British boats might have been in Iranian waters. West, who was first sea lord when the previous arrests took place in June 2004, said satellite tracking systems had shown then that the Iranians were lying and the same was certain to be true now.
This is very serious. Irraeli soldiers seized months ago are still being held.
This could grow to big time shooting, especially when some UK news anchor mentions that the female sailor is probably being raped repeatedly, as this is standard conduct for women prisoners in that culture.
Snatch three ayatollahs. Impale two, as the proof of earnestness, and use the third one as a bargaining chip.
I don't think they would dare.
If they come back nhaving been tortured in any way, there will be hell to pay.
It will be all the countenance on our end you guys will need to wipe the floor with these islamo facists.
What hell to pay? I would like to think you're right, but I'm not entirely certain there would be any real consequences for them. At any rate, even if, after the fact, there were consequences, I don't believe THEY believe there will be, so it doesn't seem like it is much of a deterrent. On the other hand, I so hope I'm wrong.
susie
I think the UK should cose that door completely. Give a 24 hr ultimatum. "Our men were not spying. We know it. You know it. Return them, or it will be seen as an act of war. By the way ... you might want to review the NATO charter: we have friends who are sworn to side with us if we care attacked. You just attacked us."
Shouldn't this be in "Breaking News"? And how can a group of Brits in Iraqi teritorial or even International waters be "insurgents"? Imapsychopath is listening to CNN too much. THEY don't know the definition of the word, either.
Their victory the last time they did this has emboldened them.
"If they come back nhaving been tortured in any way, there will be hell to pay. "
Oh no! Not a strong condemnation from the UN!
I call for President Bush to initial an EO ... draft all us old codgers that can't see as well as a 20 year old, eat a lot less and have pretty much completed our lives and have the option to play golf, fiddle around on the internet, attend rally's and ... or have another shot at being warrior/patriots.
"Corporal, we're to take prisoners for interrogation ... got it?"
"Yes sir"
budda budda budda budda budda budda budda budda budda budda budda budda budda budda budda budda budda ....
My point is, it will be 100% easier to justify military action on the nuclear issue when the time comes.
No, this is not an escalation. This is business as usual from the Iranians. Let's take a ride down memory lane. 4 Nov 1979 to 20 Jan 1981 52 Americans are held hostage by Iranian. Iran created and financed Hezbollah who routinely kill people in Lebanon and seek to establish a Shia Islamic Republic. For example, 23 Oct 1983 Iran's Hezbollah agents in Lebanon blow up a barracks with 1200 pound bomb 299 marines and 6 civilians. In 1992 and 1994, Iran's proxy Hezbollah blew up an Israeli Embassy and a Jewish Community Center in Argentina killing 121 people in these combined attacks. In Jul 2006, Hezbollah, under Iranians guidance, kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in Israel and caused the war last Summer with Israel. During that war, Iranian-made rockets and Iranian bought missiles and rockets rained down on civilians in Israel. Iran has supplied the training - mostly Hezbollah trainers - and weapons used in IEDs that kill American forces and coalition forces in Iraq. Iran has been doing this and much more for a long, long time.
I understand your point. I'm just not sure they look at it that way. I hope you're right.
susie
I think Ahmadinejad might be having political problems at home and is hoping for a limited military attack to make himself a victim of foreign oppression. And I believe we can thank our own democrats for weakening our foreign policy and that of our allies to the point where the Iranians believe all out war is an impossibility.
This seems similar to the Chinese incident with the spy plane early in Bush's first term. I believe the Chinese were planning to try those personnel as spies, but it was just posturing to get a deal for their release.
Remember the stated military strategy of Al Qaeda - first, eliminate the support from allies of the United States. Spain, France, Denmark, the Netherlands... all of which has had to deal with organized Islamic terrorism on their soil. The Australians were targeted but haven't folded. Now the English are targeted. If they fold, then the coalition against the Islamofascists is reduced to the United States, Israel, and Australia.
My guess is that Iran has decided to capture the British soldiers as part of a larger strategy. Kill the soldiers; get rid of Blair; embolden the Islamic world; and the war progresses in its glacial pace, exactly as it is supposed to be. You don't want to provoke an all-out war with a nuclear superpower; you want to slowly erode support, erode strength of will, and erode legitimacy. Eventually, all that will be required is a small push and your enemy is demolished.
Interesting idea.
I'm not sure they're thinking that far ahead, but they do see this primarily (I think) as a propaganda victory that makes them look like the big cheese in the ME, if we fold, which they have learned from the past is what we will do. I doubt that they will "try" these guys or do anything other than parade them on television at some point, make them say they were in Iranian waters (which they were not, but that doesn't matter), and then go off to bask in the adoration of the ME.
However, it's true that their strategy is a nibble-nibble strategy, doing things that we will consider too small or too indirect to merit a response, but which will cumulatively have the effect of weakening us considerably and ultimately undermining our ability to respond.
Wrong. The president immediately deployed assets to be in place in case it came to war. He really believes in backing up threat with the clear danger of military force.
In that way, this is similar, though that's not the way you meant it: the Brits are there, the Brits are p*ssed and the rumble of anger has only begun. The longer this drags out, and especially if Iran carrys this empty threat through, there will be military action.
Limited military action IS a possibility, provided the targets are hard ones. The Iranian government is playing with a weak hand and bluffing badly. They're outnimbered by their own oppressed citizens. Bombing from one direction while a civil war blooms from within is NOT a position any government wants to be in.
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