Iran Is Pushing It
Published Fri, Mar 23 2007 7:54 AM
Technorati Tags: News and Politics, War on Terror
Iran has been pushing it's luck for quite some time now. Hyping up the rhetoric against the West. Enriching uranium in defiance of U.N. resolutions.
Not that U.N. resolutions mean much.
Now they've captured a group of British Sailors that were inspecting a boat for contraband. From the BBC:
Fifteen British Navy personnel have been captured at gunpoint by Iranian forces, the Ministry of Defence says.
The men were seized at 1030 local time when they boarded a boat in the Gulf, off the coast of Iraq, which they suspected was smuggling cars.
The Royal Navy said the men, who were on a routine patrol in Iraqi waters, were understood to be unharmed.
The Foreign Office has demanded the immediate and safe return of the men, who are based on HMS Cornwall.
Iran took some British sailors hostage back in 2004 too, claiming then, as now, that the sailors were in Iranian waters. It's possible I suppose, but I still have to wonder.
The incident comes at a time of renewed tensions with Iran over its nuclear programme, which Western powers fear could be used to develop a nuclear weapon.
British Army Colonel Justin Maciejewski, who is based in Iraq, said most of the violence against UK forces in Basra is being engineered by Iranian elements.
Col Maciejewski said Iran was providing "sophisticated weaponry" to insurgents and "Iranian agents" were paying local men to attack British troops.
Iranian officials have in the past denied such claims.
In 2004, Iran detained eight British servicemen for three days after they allegedly strayed over the maritime border.
The UK claimed the men were "forcibly escorted" into Iranian territorial waters.
With the hard-line government in Iran now, this seems even more likely this time. Iran has a history of taking people hostage.
We've really got to stop treating their government as if they're rational. Their leaders have been terrorists since the 1980s.
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