Their grip on the country is waning as is, what do we do?. Real tough call.
"Their grip on the country is waning as is, what do we do?. Real tough call."
Not that tough a call, a gasoline embargo until the soldiers return would be pretty effective.
Say your supposition is correct. The best thing to do outside of our likely interior clandestine operations that I think are already occurring is to embargo, eradicate their naval forces, remove their refinery, and level their reactor along with hammering all of their known nuke facilities. It's way past time to take down their terrorist initiating regime and perhaps some internal attacks in Europe from Iranian led sappers will finally put enough steel into the backbones of Europeans to prod them into acting with us in this endeavor.
Yeah, I know, wishful thinking.
I have been thinking about this a great deal. You are correct. A public pissing match will only strengthen the regime. However, a private pissing match would do the job. The West should start killing their people and breaking their stuff, but preserve deny-ability. Our public position should be to negotiate. Each day those sailors are held captive should cost the Iranians big time. They will get the message and they will score no propaganda points.