Translation: Don't you see, it's Bush that forced them to invade a foreign nation and capture hostages from the military of a foreign nation. They didn't have a choice!!!!!
But, they point out, it wasn't Iran that started taking hostages — it was the U.S., when it arrested five members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Erbil in Northern Iraq on January 11.
Translation: Once again it's Bush's fault. He started this. Iran was peacefully minding it's own business and trying to improve diplomatic relations with Iraq, and Bush couldn't have that, so he abducted the diplomats.
A little question for Time. Are the "diplomats" that most countries send to another country when trying to improve diplomatic relations normally part of that country's elite military force, such as the Iranian Republican Guard?
Since Bush has provided evidence that the Insurgents have received aid from the Iranian Republican Guard, and these members of the Republican Guard did not have diplomatic immunity, isn't calling them "diplomats" a pretty obvious and blatant lie?
Also note that when our forces captured these members of the Iranian Republican Guard, they didn't invade a soverign nation and capture soldiers that were in the process of enforcing a UN mandate.
They are diplomats, the Iranians insist. They were in Erbil with the approval of the Kurds and therefore, they argue, are under the protection of the Vienna Convention.
The Kurds don't have the authority to grant diplomatic immunity. That would be like California inviting members of Castro's military to visit and arguing they had diplomatic immunity because the state government invited them.
Iranian grievances, real and perceived, don't stop there. Tehran is convinced the U.S. or one of its allies was behind the March 2006 separatist violence in Iranian Baluchistan, which ended up with 20 people killed, including an IRGC member executed.
The US has provided evidence that Iran has been involved in insurgent attacks and is providing material aid to terrorists that are killing American and British soldiers as well as numerous Iraqis.
Needless to say the Iranians are not happy there are American soldiers on two of its borders, as well as two carriers and a dozen warships in the Gulf. You call this paranoia? they ask.
The worlds largest state sponsor of terrorists is complaining that the US is trying to bully it, and Time is taking up it's cause as it's own?
The Bush Administration is doing nothing to allay Tehran's paranoia. With the largest buildup in the Gulf since the start of this Iraq war, it's actually fanning it.
And why would they be doing that? It wouldn't have anything to do with Iran funding terrorism, lending material aid to the insurgents in Iraq, and bullying their neighbors while at the same time working to develop nuclear weapons so they have a much better tool with which to either threaten or even attack their enemies through intermediaries?
If Iran developed nukes, provided them to terrorists, and they detonated them in a US city, do you think Time would call for going to war with Iran, or do you think that they would lobby for appeasement and warn that we can't risk Iran attacking with nukes if we invade?
My guess is that they only way they will stop calling for appeasement is if they are silenced by being the ones killed in the nuclear blast.
Add this to the rest of the bad news coming out of the Gulf, and things look pretty grim. The "surge," despite what some claim, has barely made a dent in the violence in Iraq.
That one is simply a lie.
Our Arab allies are jumping ship, apparently as fast as they can. At the opening of the Arab summit on Wednesday, Saudi King Abdallah accused the U.S of illegally occupying Iraq.
That isn't inconsistent with the level of support our "ally" Saudi Arabia has provided. The give us some help, but at the same time the maintain a level of anti-US rhetoric that they feel they need because their control over their own people is tenuous at times.
The day before, the leader of the United Arab Emirates sent his foreign minister to Tehran to tell the Iranians he would not allow the U.S. to use UAE soil to attack Iran.
You mean we can't put forces on the soil of one of the smallest nations in the region THAT DOESN"T EVEN BORDER IRAN? What a horrible loss to our cause should we need to invade Iran.
That leaves us with Kuwait and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki to face Iran.
Well that covers most of Iran's western border.
We have the south covered by sea.
On the east we have Afganistan which Time left out.
Pakistan has been somewhat cooperative in the past, but is still pretty fractured, so I wouldn't expect much by way of help. Some of the warlords there might harbor some Iranians that flee if we happened to invade, but I wouldn't expect much organized support or opposition.
We don't exactly have Iran surrounded, but we have a number of fronts we could attack from including multiple land based fronts.
Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, is the author of See No Evil and, most recently, the novel Blow the House Down
Anyone wonder why the CIA has shown itself to be nearly useless in gathering good intel in the middle east?
Kind of hard to fake being insane cult, or infiltrating a government hostile to blue eyes.
This is the same drool that TIME et al. smeared on America's face during the Cold War. Somehow, it was our obligation to soothe the "Russians' historic paranoia" so as not to stumble into a shooting war. We used to get this horsepiss from geeks like Strobe Talbott all the time.