Does This Sound Familiar?
CAPTAIN ED
Tony Blair had better dust off his study material about the Jimmy Carter presidency. It looks like the Iranians have begun another embassy standoff:
"About 200 students threw rocks and firecrackers at the British Embassy on Sunday, calling for the expulsion of the country's ambassador because of the standoff over Iran's capture of 15 British sailors and marines.
Several dozen policemen prevented the protesters from entering the embassy compound, although a few briefly scaled a fence outside the compound's walls before being pushed back, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.
The protesters chanted "Death to Britain" and "Death to America" as they hurled stones into the courtyard of the embassy. They also demanded that the Iranian government expel the British ambassador and close down the embassy, calling it a "den of spies."
The British say that the police presence has kept the compound secure, but that supposedly was the case in November 1979, too. As then, Iranian clerics fuel the violent protest and have attracted Iranian youths to demonstrate. This fellow here with the rock is an Iranian imam.
Given the rhetoric from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it doesn't appear as if the mullahcracy wants to de-escalate the crisis on the ground. It will not take long before the police allow themselves to be overwhelmed by the anger of the mob -- and then the Iranians will find themselves in possession of yet another Western embassy. They have seen no reason not to allow its "students" to capture the British compound, certainly not by the EU's embarrassing show of moral cowardice last night. All of this "reasonable" talk has encouraged Ahmadinejad to bolster his own domestic position by turning Britain -- Iran's trading partner and interlocutor with America -- as its new Great Satan.
A CQ reader, Lee A, posed an interesting question in response to my earlier post on this subject. Britain belongs to NATO, and even if the EU can't find the testicular fortitude to stand up to Teheran, NATO has to do so if Iran commits an act of war against a member. The capture of the sailors and Marines qualifies as such, and the capture of an embassy puts the matter beyond all doubt.
What happens if Blair goes to NATO? If NATO refuses to respond, then NATO is finished. However, the US will do its best to keep it together, and that means the US has to come to Britain's assistance. If Congress tries to block it, the Democrats will have destroyed the alliance that they insisted the Bush administration use for its efforts in the Middle East.
This could get very, very interesting.
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