What’s behind Iran’s surprise release of the Brit sailors?

What’s behind Iran’s surprise release of the Brit sailors?
Iran felt world pressure.		46%
Nothing – Iran was being nice for once.		19%
Britain threatened them behind the scene.		35%
Total Votes for this Question: 870

Ahmadinejad's Announcement

Ahmadinejad's Announcement (click here for video)

Tehran Likely to Pay Long-Term Price

By Robin Wright

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 5, 2007; Page A12

British officials expected an angry rant when they heard that Iran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was going to give a news conference yesterday about the 15 British hostages detained two weeks ago in the Persian Gulf.

Instead, the Iranian leader pledged to release the 14 men and one woman -- ending a crisis that may lead Tehran to claim a short-term victory but also pay a long-term price, according to Iran experts and Western and Iranian officials.

The Iranian government believes it scored a number of points, the sources said. As the Islamic republic faces growing pressure at the United Nations over its nuclear program, Tehran signaled that diplomacy -- rather than confrontation -- can defuse problems with the international community in the end.

"They got what they wanted," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA and National Security Council Middle East specialist now at the Brookings Institution. "They sent a message: If you don't deal with us, if you think you can push us around, you're in for some nasty surprises. But if you deal with us, you can get a 'gift.' " Ahmadinejad described the release as a "gift" in honor of the prophet Muhammad's birthday and Easter.

Efforts to free the 15 British detainees swung from behind-the-scenes diplomacy during the first week to internationalization of the standoff during the second week, when Britain won a statement of concern from the U.N. Security Council. The turning point, according to Iranian and British sources, was the exchange of diplomatic notes at the end of last week that shifted the process back to quiet bilateral efforts.

"There was a lot of activity the last two days to bring the level of rhetoric down," said a senior Iranian official who requested anonymity. Britain's diplomatic note last Friday promised to respect Iranian territory, he said. "This shows that there is a useful and conducive way to deal with Iran and that it is not through threats," the official said. "If Britain had not taken this to the Security Council then this would have been resolved earlier."

Ahmadinejad, under pressure at home for failing to deliver on his utopian promises from the 2005 election, may also have won a domestic propaganda victory, standing up to the West at one of the country's most vulnerable times since the 1979 revolution. The standoff with Britain deflected attention from U.N. Resolution 1747, which imposed new sanctions related to Iran's nuclear program. It passed a day after the British naval team was abducted. And although Iran's Supreme National Security Council and supreme leader Ali Khamenei ultimately makes key foreign policy decisions, Iranian television showed Ahmadinejad being thanked by a British sailor.

"He has come out more popular with his own supporters at the moment," said Christopher Rundle, a retired British diplomat who served in Iran.

At a time when five members of its Revolutionary Guard Corps are being detained by the United States in Iraq, Iran's most elite military unit also proved that it can play the tit-for-tat game, experts say. The British were seized by the Guard's naval unit. "The Revolutionary Guards wanted to send a signal to the U.S. and U.K. that if you mess with us, we'll mess with you. We know where you're vulnerable," said Riedel, who believes there is a link between the two cases.

The U.S. military detained the five during a raid in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil on Jan. 11. Iran expected their release three days before the British were detained. Although U.S. and British officials deny any deal or quid pro quo for the 15 Brits, the United States allowed the Iranians to be visited for the first time by the International Committee of the Red Cross and is considering permitting Iran to have consular access to them, U.S. officials said.

Yet Iran is also likely to pay a long-term price for the hostage drama, again appearing to undertake rogue actions in violation of international law, experts and officials say. In the end, Iran recognized that the crisis was beginning to exact a cost, as it came under pressure even from allies and other Islamic countries, officials and experts say. Even Syria urged Iran to release the hostages, Syrian and U.S. sources said.

"They are so consumed with short-term issues -- how to undermine the West and how to gain leverage -- at the expense of long-term strategy. They have undermined themselves," said Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "They're playing the immediate moves of checkers and not the long-term strategy of a chess game. In the long term, it undermines their ability to attract foreign investment and have good relations" with the outside world.

Tehran was also unable to rally significant public support for another long-term showdown like the 1979-1981 hostage ordeal involving 52 American diplomats, experts added. "There was no nationalist bounce out of this," said Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "All the usual people you'd expect to be frothing at the mouth simply weren't."

Who Got the British Sailors Released? (time.com)

Wednesday, Apr. 04, 2007

By CATHERINE MAYER/LONDON AND AZADEH MOAVENI/TEHRAN

The President of Iran was clearly relishing his role as beneficent liberator of the 15 British Marines and sailors detained by Iran for nearly two weeks. At a press conference today, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the release a "gift to the British people" on the occasion of Easter as well as a commemoration of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday. The smiling President then met with the British detainees, nodding his head munificently as they lined up to offer thanks for their release. "It is for Islam," he reminded one. He joked to another: "You ended up on a compulsory visit, didn't you?"

As much as today's events appeared to be another episode of the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad show, the Iranian president's actual role in ending the crisis may have been less than meets the eye. The office of the presidency in Iran does not really have a say in matters of foreign policy. Indeed, British analysts were quick to credit another political personage for the resolution of the drama. John Williams, the former Director of News of Britain's Foreign Office, asserts that Dr. Ali Larijani, the secretary general of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, was more important in calling the shots. "It seems that around the weekend, Dr. Larijani decided to settle this and took control," says Williams. "He has proved himself a significant power broker, a man who, if he feels it is in Iran's best interests, will do business with the international community." Other observers warn against giving Larijani too much credit. Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, they say, may have decided that Iran had squeezed as much advantage out of the situation as possible and simply got Larijani to do the legwork to end the crisis.

British navy personnel, seized by Iran, wave to the media

after their meeting with the Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, at the presidential palace in Tehran, Iran,
Wednesday, April 4, 2007.

Observers in Britain don't doubt that the release of the detainees was in Iran's best interest. "If the saga had dragged on, it would have led to an escalation of international opinion against Iran," says Chris Rundle, a former British diplomat in Iran, noting that it took Iran 13 days to coordinate its policy. Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain's former ambassador to the U.S., describes the decision as "a shrewd move. The detainees were a wasting asset." The sudden announcement also reinforced a sense that Iran, and not Britain, was dictating the pace.

Having Ahmadinejad deliver the breakthrough news may have been intended to buttress that image. He remains a symbol of Tehran's defiance of the West, and, for a politician of limited power, Ahmadinejad still knows how to play his role to maximum advantage. Nazenin Ansari, the diplomatic correspondent of the London-based Persian-language weekly Kayhan, believes he and Iran's hardliners have benefited from the showdown with Britain. "What we have seen is a shift to the right," she says. Reformists had been making progress, but "in Iran politics is all about changing the atmosphere. The current has now shifted in the same way it did during the 1979 hostage crisis."

In his press conference, Ahmadinejad said the captives would have been let go sooner but that the "British government behaved badly, and so it took a little while." When asked what prompted the sudden release, he said London had sent a letter promising that such incidents would not be repeated. While careful to point out that the British sailors were being released "as a gift, and not as a result of the letter," the president's reference to a British concession served as a face-saving device, rationalizing the sudden release after much clamor in Iran for a possible trial of the British service personnel.

The Iranian leadership — including Larijani, Ahmadinejad and certainly Khamenei — believes that Tehran's popularity among the world's Muslims, particularly for its face-off against America, gives it leverage in dealing with the West. "Iranians had bruised egos because of international pressure over their nuclear program and the detentions of their personnel by the U.S. in Iraq," says Ansari. "What we've seen is a public relations exercise to take command of the Arab street once again." Says Shahid Malik, one of the first Muslims elected to Britain's parliament: "This was yet another example of how adept Ahmadinejad is at communications in the way he targets the Muslim and non-Muslim world." During the press conference, Ahmadinejad made the expected jabs at the West, referring to the U.N. Security Council as "an organization they've created" and its resolutions as "pieces of paper they keep passing." He then accused Britain of involvement in a series of bombings in Iran's ethnic minority provinces in the past two years, while saying he would avoid going into detail lest the session "turn bitter."


Downing Street welcomed the move with public caution and mopped brows behind closed doors. As the crisis dragged on, government sources acknowledged that Iran's intransigence was exposing Britain's comparative impotence. It had failed to secure a strong denunciation of Iran's actions from the U.N. Security Council; its European allies were balancing support for Britain against their business interests; and although Prime Minister Tony Blair warned a failure to reach a quick resolution would lead to a "new phase" in response to the detentions, nobody detected in his words the martial sounds of rattling sabers. "There's no mood here for military adventures in Iran or elsewhere," says Malik. "Iraq wasn't what we thought it would be. There's a somber mood in this country."

Iran to free sailors as 'gift' to British people

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

CBC News

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he will free the 15 British sailors and marines detained in the Persian Gulf last month, ending a tense 13-day standoff between Tehran and London.

During a news conference Wednesday, Ahmadinejad made the surprising announcement that he had pardoned the crew.

"On the occasion of the birthday of the great Prophet (Muhammad) … and for the occasion of the passing of Christ, I say the Islamic Republic government and the Iranian people — with all powers and legal right to put the soldiers on trial — forgave those 15," he said, referring to the Muslim Prophet's birthday on March 30 and the Easter season."

"This pardon is a gift to the British people," he said, adding that the British crew will be taken to the Tehran airport.

Even though he had every right to put them on trial, the 15 would be forgiven and released as "a gift to the British people," Ahmadinejad said.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's office said it welcomed the news of their release.

Criticizes Britain for sending woman

At one point in his lengthy news conference, Ahmadinejad awarded a medal of honour to the commander of the Iranian coast guard who intercepted the sailors and marines, praising the crew for defending the country.

Ahmadinejad said he was sorry that the sailors and marines had been arrested, and he criticized Britain for sending Faye Turney, one of the 15 detainees, into the Gulf, pointing out that she is a woman with a child.

"How can you justify seeing a mother away from her home, her children? Why don't they respect family values in the West?" he asked of the British government.

Ahmadinejad asked Blair not to put the sailors on trial for admitting they had crossed into Iranian waters. Some of the sailors were shown on video admitting they had entered Iranian waters.

The U.S. and Britain have said the Royal Navy crew was in the Iraqi part of the Shaat al Arab waterway — a border that has historically been disputed between Iraq and Iran.

علت اجماع شوراي امنيت عليه ايران در تصويب قطعنامه 1737

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اجازه بدهيد صادقانه بگويم که ما نتوانسته‌ايم از اهرم‌هاي اقتصادي در تنظيم روابطمان استفاده كنيم. آقاي رئيس‌جمهور در سفر به اندونزي، قول تأسيس پالايشگاه را به آن کشور مي‌دهند، ولي هيچ ما‌به‌ازايي را از اين کشور گرفته نمي‌شود. در مورد آفريقاي جنوبي نيز همين داستان تکرار شد. شرکت MTN آفريقاي جنوبي...

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۱۵ فروردين ۱۳۸۶ - قبل از ظهر ۱۱:۲۳

تصويب قطعنامه جديد شوراي امنيت در خصوص پرونده هسته‌اي ايران، قابل پيش‌بيني بود و تقريبا همه انتظار داشتند که اين قطعنامه با اکثريت آرا به تصويب برسد. ولي تعجب‌برانگيز، تصويب اين قطعنامه با اجماع هر پانزده کشور عضو دائم و غيردائم اين شورا بود.

يك ديپلمات ارشد ايران با بيان اين مطلب به خبرنگار «بازتاب» گفت: سفرهايي که آقاي متکي وزير خارجه و معاونان آن وزارتخانه در آخرين روزها به کشورهاي جهان انجام دادند و ديدارهايي كه از جمله با مقامات ارشد آفريقاي جنوبي، رئيس شوراي امنيت داشتند، اين اميد را در دل‌ها ايجاد کرده بود که قطعنامه 1747 حداقل با اجماع به تصويب نخواهد رسيد و اين فرصتي براي ديپلماسي ما فراهم خواهد کرد تا دست‌كم ادعاي وجود اجماع عليه برنامه صلح‌آميز هسته‌اي كشورمان را باطل كنيم، اما با كمال تعجب، حتي کشورهايي که ما همواره از آنان به عنوان کشورهاي دوست که از برنامه صلح‌آميز هسته‌اي ما حمايت مي‌کنند، به تحريم ايران، رأي مثبت ـ و نه حتي ممتنع ـ دادند.

وي گفت: وزارت خارجه ما مدعي است کشورهاي عضو عدم تعهد و اسلامي در تمام اجلاس‌ها از ايران و برنامه هسته‌اي صلح‌آميزش حمايت کرده‌اند، ولي مشخص نيست چرا اين حمايت‌ها در قالب مخالفت با قطعنامه‌هاي پي‌درپي متجلي نمي‌شود و آنان به اين نوع قطعنامه‌ها رأي مثبت مي‌دهند.

وي توضيح داد: به غير از پنج عضو دايم شوراي امنيت كه پيشتر در چهارچوب «1+5» به توافق رسيده بودند، بلژيك، ايتاليا، اسلواكي و پرو نيز به قطعنامه رأي مثبت دادند و به علاوه كشورهاي پاناما، غنا و كنگو كه عضو جنبش عدم تعهد هستند نيز در كنار سه كشور قطر، اندونزي و آفريقاي جنوبي كه روابط نزديكي با ايران دارند هم به آن رأي مثبت دادند كه بيش از همه ناراحت‌كننده است.

اين ديپلمات ارشد اظهار داشت: تصور مي‌کنم اشکال را تنها نبايد مثل هميشه به گردن ديگران و مثل هميشه استکبار جهاني انداخت و شايسته است کمي هم به ضعف خود در پيشبرد اهدافمان اعتراف نماييم. وزارت خارجه بايد پاسخ دهد، چرا کشور کوچکي مانند قطر که ادعاي دوستي با ما دارد، در مقاطع حساس اين دوستي را در حمايت از ما تعريف نمي‌کند، در حالي كه از الطاف كم‌نظير ايران بهره‌مند بوده كه نمونه كوچك آن، حضور بلندپايه‌ترين مقام اجرايي كشور، تنها براي حضور در افتتاحيه بازي‌هاي آسيايي دوحه بود.

وي اضافه كرد: اجازه بدهيد صادقانه بگويم که ما نتوانسته‌ايم از اهرم‌هاي اقتصادي در تنظيم روابطمان استفاده كنيم. آقاي رئيس‌جمهور در سفر به اندونزي، قول تأسيس پالايشگاه را به آن کشور مي‌دهند، ولي هيچ ما‌به‌ازايي را از اين کشور گرفته نمي‌شود. در مورد آفريقاي جنوبي نيز همين داستان تکرار شد. شرکت MTN آفريقاي جنوبي بدون هيچ معونه و مابه‌ازايي، پروژه دوم تلفن همراه را بدون شرکت در مناقصه گرفت و دولت متبوعش پس از اطمينان از گرفتن اين امتياز بزرگ، در هر دو قطعنامه 1737 و 1747، عليه ايران رأي داد. آيا دولت و وزارت خارجه، پيش از دادن اين امتياز بزرگ که ترک‌ها براي آن التماس مي‌كردند، نمي‌توانست از دولت آفريقاي جنوبي براي حمايت در اين‌گونه موارد امتياز بگيرد؟ به ويژه كه اين شركت بزرگ متعلق به ANC، حزب حاكم كنگره ملي آفريقاست و درواقع سود سرشار حضور اين شركت به عنوان اپراتور دوم در ايران، به جيب مقامات دولت آفريقاي جنوبي مي‌رود.

اين ديپلمات در پايان گفت: همه اين موارد نمايانگر ضعف‌هاي ديپلماتيکي است که تا آن را برطرف نکنيم، نمي‌توانيم در آوردگاه بزرگان جهان، از خود و حقمان دفاع کنيم.