There was a false report of Iranians firing on a US ship yesterday, during the provocative naval exercises, adding to the spike in oil prices.
The Brits outlined their case in the Iran hostage situation. In the first place, the boundary is “in dispute” and the Iranians may have a different idea than the Brits about where it is. However, the Iranians apparently altered their intial estimate of the Iranian ship, suggesting that they think the boundary used by the Brits may have some meaning. The Brits claimed to have the authority to search for smugglers and claim to have seen cars being loaded, but they clearly used bad judgment here. Iran suggested it would release the one Brit who is a woman.
“It is now time to ratchet up international and diplomatic pressure” on Iran to demonstrate its “total isolation,” Prime Minister Tony Blair told parliament after the Royal Navy made public details of what it said was the sailors’ position when they were apprehended.
Meanwhile, the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, told a Turkish television station today that Iran would release “today or tomorrow” the only woman among the 15 captives.The Royal Navy took the highly unusual step of making public charts, photographs and previously secret navigational coordinates purportedly proving that the sailors were 1.7 nautical miles inside Iraqi waters, and not in Iranian waters, when they were seized.
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Iran responded by insisting that the British sailors were inside Iranian waters when they were seized. At the same time, though, a Turkish television station, CNN-Turk, quoted the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as saying that Iran may allow Turkish diplomats to visit the captured Britons.
CNN-Turk also quoted the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, who was speaking on the sidelines of an Arab summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as saying that one of the sailors, Faye Turney, 26, would be released soon. “Today or tomorrow, the lady will be released,” he said.The Royal Navy rejected two sets of coordinates provided by Iran as evidence of its claim that the British sailors had strayed into Iranian territorial waters.
He said that, in secret diplomatic contacts, Iran had produced two conflicting sets of coordinates to bolster its case, the first placing the British soldiers in Iraqi waters.
Meanwhile, Robert Gates, the most reliable spokesman of what’s in store, said:
Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Tuesday said the United States was open to high-level talks with Tehran, but warned against “illusions” about Iran’s government and its intentions.
“We should have no illusions about the nature of this regime or about their designs for their nuclear program, their intentions for Iraq or their ambitions in the Gulf region,” Gates said at a speech to the American-Turkish Council in Washington.
I just don’t think that Bush has still got the heart for another war. I am not sure of the relationship between Gates, Cheney and Bush; but Gates is clearly not looking to go to war, and the tenor is definitely different than that of the pre-Iraq war period. There is no coalition, no international or national consensus for war. See this.
”I think the discussion has really shifted,” says M. J. Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum, a group that favors diplomatic efforts to resolve the Middle East’s problems.
”The conventional wisdom in Washington has changed,” says Rosenberg.
There were influential people who thought that military action could be possible this year, he says. ”Now, hardly anyone does.”
In yesterday’s New York Times, reliable Bush stenographer Michael Gordon, who collaborated with Judith Miller on the selling of the Iraq War, does more yeoman duty in the propaganda war against Iran. Gordon writes again about the EFPs alleged to be produced in Iran and shipped to Iraq. In this piece Gordon gives some background on the supposed origins of the US concerns about the explosive devices. If you read the piece closely, you will notice the usual anonymous sources, statistical fallacies, logical flaws, Pentagon talking points, etc. Gordon tries to appear unconvinced, but does nothing to find the weak links in the Pentagon’s propaganda or even publish those points which have been made by others. Gordon is a war monger and Pentagon/Bush administration “go to” guy when they want to plant some charges against a Middle East country. I find him repulsive.
The Saudis, frustrated by the lack of any US effort on the Palestinian issue, came out very strongly against the Israeli blockade and called for Israel to accept the Saudi peace proposal, which would require Israel to go back to the pre 1967 borders. The Saudi king also termed the US occupation of Iraq illegal. The US may think it can string along the Sunnis with fancy footwork over the Palestinian question. I’m not so sure they can. The emergence of the Saudis creates even more problems for Bush. But the Saudis are correct. Finding a solution to the Palestinian situation will achieve much more for regional and world peace than all of Bush’s bombs and torture.
I don’t think we are looking at an attack at the moment. The US naval air exercises may “accidentally” overfly Iranian territory, which would evoke some angry words from Tehran, but hopefully nothing else.
