No Change In Iranian Position After Release
CAPTAIN ED
The US has determined that the release of 15 British Navy personnel reflects no great change in the Iranian diplomatic posture. The New York Times reports that the White House believes that the order for the capture came from lower levels, and the decision to release them came only after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrung as much publicity as he could without any negative consequences:
"The Bush administration said Thursday that the release of 15 British sailors and marines held by Iran for two weeks created no new openings in dealing with Tehran, and it urged American allies to return their attention to enforcing new sanctions against Iran.
In public statements and background interviews, White House and State Department officials said that they saw no indications that the release indicated a change of attitude by Iran's leadership. Neither did they see any more willingness to discuss suspension of its enrichment of uranium — the requirement that President Bush has said Iran must meet before he is willing to accept talks with the country.
One senior official, who like some other officials who discussed the issue spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing internal assessments of Iran's motivation, said that the administration's internal assessment of the episode, while incomplete, suggested that the seizure of the Britons was "probably not directed from the upper reaches government." The official said that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided on the release because "he understood that they had exploited whatever they could from the incident" and that "declaring them guilty and letting them go was the cleverest way to get out of it."
We have heard a lot of explanations of the Iranian decisions involved in this crisis, and this is probably as good as any of them. The Iranian government has competing factions within it, and is stressed by a populace that largely, if weakly, opposes their foreign policy. The poor economy and its momentum in decline have also created more cracks in the political landscape, and confidence in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad keeps ebbing away, or so reports have it.
That would explain both why Ahmadinejad acted so quickly to exploit the situation and why he acted rather quickly to end it. Nothing fires people up like humiliating the former colonialists of the region. In that sense, the televised antics seen on Iranian TV -- and then rebroadcast around the world -- equates to the Roman circuses of old. Ahmadinejad got a chance to boost his sagging political fortunes on the cheap, thanks to the British. When it both got old and started to provoke the British, he dropped the entire project on his own terms rather than being forced to do so on British terms -- or American terms.
The British have begun investigating these televised interviews, which were clear violations of the Geneva Convention, a pact that all signatories pledge to follow in any conflict, whether declared or not. The sailors and Marines have indicated that "psychological pressure" came from their captors to make those videos, which could be yet another violation of the GC, depending on its form. More significantly, the British have suspended all boarding operations in the Persian Gulf, which means that the waterways into Iraqi ports could open up once more to terrorists -- a situation that benefits the Iranians most of all.
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