They're free, but Britain has been humiliated

The Telegraph ^ | Last Updated: 12:01am BST 05/04/2007 | Editorial

[Eurotwit]

Relief at the freeing of the British sailors and Marines in Iran is tempered with dismay at the humiliation to which they and the country they serve have been subjected.

The 14 men and one woman are due to return to Britain today, in time to be reunited with their families for Easter, a point not lost on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he announced their release.

The Government will congratulate itself on securing their liberation within the relatively short period - given the complexities of dealing with the various power centres in Iran - of 12 days. It will also be pleased that they are physically unharmed, though we do not yet know the psychological pressures they may have been put under. An initial high-risk policy of taking the abduction to the United Nations Security Council was replaced by low-key diplomacy, in which the dispatch to Teheran of Sir Nigel Sheinwald, Tony Blair's foreign policy adviser and Britain's ambassador-designate to Washington, seems to have been crucial.

The announcement of the captives' release followed his meeting on Tuesday night with Ali Larijani, head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council. And their freeing has taken place without the Government's having to apologise for an incident, the alleged straying into Iranian waters, that it has formally denied.

Yet the satisfaction of a diplomatic challenge eventually handled with skill is soured by the string of psychological humiliations that Britain has suffered.

First, there is the apparent incompetence of the Royal Navy in providing insufficient protection to lightly armed inflatables, at a time when relations between Iran and the West were particularly volatile following the imposition of UN sanctions. Second, the seized personnel lost no time in admitting to having trespassed and in apologising for their mistake. The old military practice of giving name, rank and number, and no more, has obviously been abandoned.

Third, the dénouement of this crisis showed Mr Ahmadinejad in the most favourable of lights, whether in "pardoning" the 15, pleading on their behalf with Mr Blair, admonishing this country for separating a mother, Leading Seaman Faye Turney, from her child, or shaking hands and chatting with the newly besuited Servicemen after his press conference.

The Iranian president has rightly been demonised in the West for his call for Israel's destruction and his pursuit of a nuclear weapons programme in defiance of the UN. Yet yesterday he was able to adopt the moral high ground, admonishing the Government while treating graciously those who had been acting on its behalf at the head of the Gulf.

This bodes badly for the West's relations with Teheran over a number of acutely difficult problems during the coming months: its defiance of UN sanctions imposed because of a refusal to halt uranium enrichment; its heightened meddling in Iraq; and its continued support for terrorist movements - Hizbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and elements of Fatah - vowed to Israel's destruction. During the recent crisis, Iran has yielded not a jot on any of these matters. Rather, the approval it has enjoyed on the Islamic "street" for humiliating an old enemy is likely to make it even more intransigent.

Labour has invested much diplomatic capital in trying to engage revolutionary Iran. But the seizure of the sailors and Marines has enabled Teheran to paint it back into a corner of close association with the "Great Satan", America, and to reawaken the Iranian public's historic suspicion of British designs.

No one would pretend that it is easy to deal with a nation that, since 1979, has shown itself prepared to treat norms of diplomatic behaviour with contempt. However, the steps that led to the seizure of the 15 on March 23 must be thoroughly investigated.

It appears that the Royal Navy has a lot to answer for.

[jveritas]

But we should be at least funding opposition so they can organize, make videos, buy small arms, assasinate mullahs, etc.

Agree.

[mimaw]

Why would you expect these naval personnel to endure any physical discomfort? With the attitude of the British civilians toward the war in Iraq I doubt these people feel the need to take one more for the home team. I’m disgusted by the Euro’s and their attitude and lack of will to fight for anything.

[Fierce Allegiance]

Make that 2. The USA is wussing out of the fight, it seems.

[MikeGranby]

Re the name, rank and serial number thing, it appears that this is no longer the rule for British servicemen...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=445562&in_page_id=1770

[B.O. Plenty]

.....we would hope so, but don't hold your breath. There is something about the way PC infects people that's hard to understand. It has to be like cancer...starting slowly with hardly any symptoms. Then, when the symptoms get worse, the victim goes into denial, and finally into a terminal condition.

But, unfortunately, in the case of PC, the terminal condition takes a bunch of innocent people down with the victim.

I really hate the bastards who are delivering us into the PC hell....the worst part is that the muzzies are sitting over there in the dirt laughing their asses off because we are, in the words of Lone Wati, "so easy to sneak up on"

Its disgusting, disappointing and in time will get thousands of Americans killed.

[nuconvert]

Bump

[Mr. Mojo]

Their navy, if the proposals go through, will be half the size it was during the Falkland’s War.

And his hasn't escaped the attention of the Argentinians, who not surprisingly this week have started making noises about their longstanding claim to the islands. It's difficult to imagine the 2007 version of the Royal Naval, if necessary, taking similar action to that of the Thatcher-era Navy.

[sageb1]

Thought you’d appreciate this.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/04/picture_this_tr.html

[MaxMax]

Exactly,
they're not free yet!

Damn I hate the Media's BS methods..

[Clemenza]

Britain: If San Francisco were a country, with worse gun laws. ;-)

[KoRn]

It’s sad for the Brits that the strongest words on the matter were said by Bush. I wonder how many diplomatic promises the Brits made to the Iranians behind the scenes to make this happen.

[jveritas]

This Larijani terrorist is one of the biggest dog and pony show that the terrorist rulers in Tehran put forward to further fool the useful idiots and defeatist in the West. Notice how the article you linked talks about Larijani as “A fluent English speaker and expert on the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, Mr Larijani has established himself as Iran’s leading foreign policy expert.” Typical shallow idiots in the West who get so orgasmic when they see a Middle Eastern who is an intellectual and speaks fluent English or a European language or know something about Western culture. Also to even make the deception more efficient, the terrorist mullahs chose Larjani because he he looks more European than Middle Eastern (He looks like a European liberal academic, observe his picture closely) and they know that many useful idiots in the West will fall for crap like this thinking that if the guy does not appear Middle Eastern and he is an intellectual than he should be smart and moderate. I am not kidding about this, in fact I am sure that this is a main reason why they selected Larjani to be their chief negotiator with the West.

[bvw]

Dewey beat Truman.

[jveritas]

WOW!!!

[I see my hands]

"nobody emerges from this crisis with credit"

Wrong. W does for speaking clearly and unafraid.

[kabar]

The likelihood of them not being released is between slim to none and slim left town. They will be back in the UK on Thursday,

[I see my hands]

With allies like these..

[wentali]

Bow to your Dominator !



The typical 3 steps in 2 weeks : Kidnapping - Stockholm syndrome - Conversion.
I would not be surprised, in 6 month from now, that some of the british converted to Islam. This might be the classic example what some people warn us about. In 2 weeks time laps, we saw what might take 20 years for a country. The slow Conversion of the western world to Islam. And on the end we will say : Thank you, and we will joke with our new masters and thanking them for not cutting off our head for some benign misbehavior.

[BallyBill]

Them sailors would have been considered casualties decades ago and Iran would be smoldering now. I hope the future leaders of the Western World do better than we have.

I'm embarrassed for myself and my generation.

[kabar]

It’s sad for the Brits that the strongest words on the matter were said by Bush. I wonder how many diplomatic promises the Brits made to the Iranians behind the scenes to make this happen.

The Iraqis have already obtained the release on Monday of the Iranian diplomat who was supposedly seized by some unkown group. He is back in Tehran and was greeted by the Iranian FM at the airport. The 5 Revolutionary Guard held by us in Iraq will now be visited by the Iranians and the Iraqis are pressing the US to finish its investigation of the five. You can be pretty sure that they will be released in the not too distant future. We were part of this deal whether we state it publicly or not.