Brit Fishwrapper Blames U.S. for Hostage Crisis

The Brits have completely screwed up the hostage situation involving their sailors, who are now making daily apologies like some type of cable reality show on Iranian TV. Rather than examine their own government and military's response to the situation, one Brit tabloid has decided the crisis is America's fault because of something that happened 10 weeks ago:

A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.

Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.

In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective, The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.

Better understanding of the seriousness of the US action in Arbil - and the angry Iranian response to it - should have led Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence to realise that Iran was likely to retaliate against American or British forces such as highly vulnerable Navy search parties in the Gulf. The two senior Iranian officers the US sought to capture were Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, according to Kurdish officials.

The failure of the Brits in this situation is not in a lack of anticipation on the part of the government or the military to something Iran might do in retaliation, but the lack of cogent rules of engagement which would not have required the ship's commander to have to radio for instructions while his crewmen were taken hostage. The Brits got caught with their pants down and they can't blame that on the U.S.

And don't miss this article by John Derbyshire on his reaction to his fellow Britons' daily appearances on Iranian TV. He's not happy.