 Anti -British and anti-American protests rocked Iran this weekend, as the public tension continued to heat up over the fates of those 15 Royal Naval and Marine personnel seized by Iranian Revolutionary Guards on March 23rd and subsequently paraded on television. Meanwhile, word from Fareed Zakaria on "MTP" today was that behind the scenes, the Brits and Iranians have dramatically lowered the temperature, and are engaged in talks to resolve the conflict, which appears more and more to be a calculated error on the part of the Revolutionary guards, but one in which the Mullahs have now put down stakes. Meanwhile, the Times of London reports that the fate of the detainees, whom President Bush officially called "hostages" this week -- probably much to the chagrin of his former BFF Tony Blair -- may rest on a clash between two generals within the Revolutionary Guards over whether to let the prisoners go free, or put them on trial.
It now appears that Iran is ratcheting up the rhetoric while the Brits are cooling it down, even expressing "regret" for the incident via the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett (which drew an immediate public snub from Tehran, though who knows what's being said behind the scenes.) Is that a sign that Britain thinks it can get its soldiers back through diplomacy? Or is this Britain's way of walking away from a Bushian opportunity to let the neocons unleash the bombers? Time will tell...
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Labels: Great Britain, Iran, Iraq war, Tony Blair, U.K. |
