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Iran’s Seizure Of Ten US Sailors- A Disrespect To Int Com by Nobody: 11:33am On Jan 14, 2016 |
Iran’s seizure of ten US sailors on board two
high-speed patrol vessels fits the pattern of
brinkmanship bordering on contempt that
Tehran continues to display toward the
international community.
Details of how the two American craft found
themselves in Iranian waters remain unclear –
Washington said that the second craft had gone
to the aid of the first after it had encountered
mechanical difficulties on a voyage between
Kuwait and Bahrain. But the timing of the
incident could hardly have been more
significant. Barack Obama was about to make
his last presidential State of the Union address
while the House of Representatives was
preparing to consider a bill demanding
sanctions linked to illegal Iranian missile tests
last December, provocatively close to US
warships.
Even as it is awaiting the start of the removal of
sanctions under the P5+1 deal agreed in
Geneva last summer, the Iranian regime is full
of defiance and braggadocio. It is claiming that
it has met one of the conditions of the
sanctions-lifting deal by removing the core of
its Arak heavy water nuclear reactor and filling
it with cement. This has, however, yet to be
verified by inspectors from the International
Atomic Energy Agency.
Indeed, nothing that Iran’s current leadership
says can be taken on trust. Washington is
reported to have apologized for the incursion
into waters around Farsi island in the middle of
the Gulf. Iranian foreign minister Mohammad
Javad Zarif has assured US Secretary of State
John Kerry that the ten sailors, one of them
female, would soon be released. Yet he must
have known that such a promise carried a risk,
since the island is an operational base for naval
units of the hardline Iranian Revolutionary
Guards. Insisting that they are directly
accountable to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei,
the IRG are a law unto themselves. They are
once again reveling in the opportunity to
humiliate the United States, certain in the
knowledge that a weak president Obama will
not want to jeopardize his one big foreign
policy achievement – the apparent nuclear de-
weaponizing of Iran.
The extent to which Obama and his team have
become mesmerized by the swaying head of
the Iranian cobra is truly alarming. It is still not
too late to draw back from the removal of
sanctions, which once lifted will be hard to
reimpose. US legislators, no longer simply just
Republicans, are waking up to the wider risks of
a financially re-empowered Iranian regime.
Looking at Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon,
they see that blatant Iranian support for
terrorism has brought death, destruction and
massive instability.
It really is time to call a halt to this exceedingly
ill-judged nuclear deal. Moreover, it ought by
now to have dawned on somebody in the
Obama administration that avoiding a
confrontation now that would force Tehran to
abandon its support for terrorism is only
postponing the day when resolute action will
finally have to be taken. The costs of that delay
will be high. They will be paid in the Arab world
as Tehran redoubles its attempts at devilish
destabilization throughout the region. But they
will ultimately also be paid by the US and its
allies, because the Iran that they will have to
bring back into line will be richer and better
armed and resourced thanks to the premature
lifting of sanctions. |
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