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Archive for the ‘Iran’ Category

From today’s Omega Letter by Jack Kinsella:

OPEC’s second largest oil producer — and therefore a major player in the international oil cartel, is the Islamic Republic of Iran.

And, as the world’s second largest producer of oil, Iran insists it needs nuclear power to meet its domestic energy needs.

For reasons that confound logic, that conundrum presents no challenge for much of Europe, the Chinese, the Russians, and even some of the Sunni Islamic states that have the most to fear from a nuclear-armed Shi’ite Islamic republic.

But what is even more baffling is the fact that Iran seems determined to use its oil wealth to force a military confrontation with the United States.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the depreciating dollar a “worthless piece of paper” at a rare summit last year in Saudi Arabia attended by state leaders from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Now he’s going to prove it. This week, Iran announced it was ending all oil transactions in US dollars.

“The dollar has totally been removed from Iran’s oil transactions,” Oil Ministry official Hojjatollah Ghanimifard told state-run television Wednesday. “We have agreed with all of our crude oil customers to do our transactions in non-dollar currencies.”

Iran’s oil ministry says that it will only accept euros or the Japanese yen for oil, a direct slap at the struggling US dollar. Iran’s central bank has also been reducing its foreign reserves denominated in U.S. dollars, further weakening the currency on the international market.

To understand what Iran’s shift away from the dollar means to you and me, we need to take a quick trip through the history books.

After the outbreak of World War Two, America became the armory to the world, selling billions and billions of dollars worth of weapons to the Allies, for which it demanded payment in gold.

By war’s end, the majority of the world’s gold reserves reverted from America’s European creditors of the 1930’s — and back to the United States.

The Bretton Woods Agreement in 1945 made the US dollar convertible to gold at the government level. This established the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

But the twin wars on poverty and in Vietnam drained the US economy, forcing the Fed to increase the money supply, most of which ended up as foreign reserve currency holdings.

The runaway inflation caused by the artificial increase in the money supply began to worry investors. By the 1970s, foreign governments began demanding payment for their dollars in gold.

On August 15, 1971, the US announced it was ’severing the link between the dollar and gold’ and defaulted on its payments.

In order to keep the dollar (and the global economy) from collapsing, the US had to find some economic replacement for the gold standard. In 1973, Washington cut an iron-clad deal with the Saudis.

The US would prop up the Saudi regime in exchange for a Saudi pledge to accept only US dollars in payment for oil sales. Eventually, the rest of OPEC followed suit.

The world had to buy oil. And since they could only buy them with US dollars, they needed to continue to hold US dollars in reserve.

In order to buy oil, the world’s net oil importers HAD to maintain a reserve supply of US currency, keeping it out of circulation, which kept the world from being flooded with dollars, which would, of course, devalue it.

Should OPEC drop the US dollar as its official currency, all those dollar reserve holdings would suddenly be released on the global market, and the US dollar would soon be worthless.

Tehran’s decision amounts to an act of economic warfare against the United States that, should it take hold among the rest of the OPEC states (including Venezuela) could bring the American economy to its knees.

So it should be of no surprise to anyone to learn that the United States has just dispatched a second American aircraft carrier group into the Persian Gulf.

This may well be — ahem — the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Assessment:

Washington can’t afford to admit that it is going to war over oil — even though there is probably no reason more historically justifiable.

Those historians who blame the United States for forcing Imperial Japan into World War II point to the US embargo of Japanese oil as the principle cause.

Since Japan had no natural resources of its own, war was Japan’s only option. And seen from Japan’s perspective in the 1930’s, one can hardly argue — but the Allies utterly rejected that argument in 1945.

There is something about going to war over oil that sticks in our craw; it seems so, ummm, mercenary and self-serving — Americans are better than that.

And we are better than that — right now. It is much easier to behave honorably when somebody takes your lawnmower than it is when you are about to lose your house.

Here we see the inherent truth in yet another old saying — “desperate times call for desperate measures.”

Iran has been steadily making Washington’s case FOR war for the White House. Noted Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week; “What the Iranians are doing is killing American servicemen and women inside Iraq.”

The Pentagon is not eager for war with Iran — US forces are stretched thin now, but are nowhere nearly exhausted.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen made that clear at a Pentagon press briefing last week, warning Tehran:

“I have reserve capability, in particular our Navy and our Air Force so it would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability.”

The US already has a broad and convincing case for war against the Iranian regime; its support for Hezbollah, al-Qaeda in Iraq and Hamas; its belligerency towards Israel, its harrassment of US-flagged ships in the Gulf — but it is the threat to the US oil economy that is the red flag.

One of the enduring images from the pre-Iraq invasion demonstrations were of sign-carrying American Useful Idiots chanting “No Blood for Oil.”

In January 2003, Americans were paying $1.78 a gallon. Now that it is approaching five dollars, “No Blood for Oil” means something altogether different — now that its our blood on the line.

That second carrier group isn’t steaming in the Persian Gulf for nothing.

Nothing short of our annihilation would thrill our radical Muslim enemies more than to see our economy collapse. That was the purpose of 9/11 according to some.

We should be using the oil available to us in our own country instead of depending on the Middle East and now Venezuela for it. We have the reserves and we can get it and still be safe environmentally. We are at least ten years behind on this and we need to make up for it.

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Back in July Sen. Clinton took Sen. Obama to task for saying he would negotiate with Iran.

The question that sparked the controversy at Monday’s debate seemed simple enough: Would the candidates for president be willing to meet, within their first year in office, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea?

Obama said yes, while Clinton said no, arguing that the president should only meet with world leaders who are hostile to the United States after lower-level diplomatic contacts are conducted. In an interview today with the Quad City Times, Clinton more directly criticized Obama’s answer.

“I thought that was irresponsible and frankly naive,” Clinton said, according to a story posted on the newspaper’s Web site.

Now she’s hit the ball somewhere but I’m not sure where it landed. She’s changed her mind about negotiations with Iran.

“True statesmanship requires that we engage with our adversaries, not for the sake of talking but because robust diplomacy is a prerequisite to achieving our aims.”

She says she would even consider offering incentives to Iran in return for a pledge to disarm. However, she sets out a series of stringent conditions that are virtually identical to current White House policy.

“If Iran is in fact willing to end its nuclear weapons programme, renounce sponsorship of terrorism, support Middle East peace, and play a constructive role in stabilising Iraq, the United States should be prepared to offer Iran a carefully calibrated package of incentives,” Ms Clinton wrote.

Er, no, not really.

“If Iran does not comply with its own commitments and the will of the international community, all options must remain on the table,” Ms Clinton said.

Well, that last quote certainly sounds decisive, doesn’t it? If Iran doesn’t comply we’ll make sure the international community concurs before we do anything to them.

How about if we pass 17 Security Council resolutions against Iran saying serious consequences will result if they don’t behave themselves? That should work. 8-|

I’m not advocating war with Iran by any means, but just what do you use for negotiations when you keep saying “pretty please”?

I guess we’ll be saying “pretty please” as the rockets are heading our way.

I’m getting whiplash trying to keep track of her daily positions on the same topic.

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Newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said if diplomacy doesn’t work in getting Iran to give up their nuclear capabilities the only other option would be Iran bombing someone or someone bombing Iran.

Sarkozy said a nuclear-armed Iran would be unacceptable and that major powers should continue their policy of incrementally increasing sanctions against Tehran while being open to talks if Iran suspended nuclear activities.

“This initiative is the only one that can enable us to escape an alternative that I say is catastrophic: the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran,” he said, adding that it was the worst crisis currently facing the world.

Tehran says it only wants to generate electricity but it has yet to convince the world’s most powerful countries that it is not secretly pursuing nuclear weapons.

Sarkozy criticized Russia for its dealings on the international stage. “Russia is imposing its return on the world scene by using its assets, notably oil and gas, with a certain brutality,” he said.

“When one is a great power, one should not be brutal.”

Energy disputes between Russia and neighbors such as Belarus and Ukraine have raised doubts in Europe about Moscow’s reliability as a gas exporter. It supplies Europe, via its neighbors, with around a quarter of its gas demands.

Sarkozy had warm words for the United States, saying friendship between the two countries was important. But he said he felt free to disagree with American policies, highlighting what he called a lack of leadership on the environment.

Of course, diplomacy would be the preferred method of solving this crisis.

On another note, it seems nice to finally have a French president who has good feeling about America, even though he may disagree with us on some issues.

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Speaks for itself.

the United Nations Security Council slapped economic sanctions on Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group for its role in weapons proliferation as Iran’s maker of liquid-fueled ballistic missiles.

Known as SHIG, the Iranian firm produces the Shahab III rocket, which has a range of at least 800 miles, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. That radius puts downtown Tel Aviv, Saudi Arabia’s oil fields and India’s financial center, Mumbai, within reach.

Three days after the Security Council ordered a freeze on SHIG’s assets to help block Iran from developing nuclear weapons, the maker of the country’s longest-range missile was ready to go shopping in Europe.

It turned for help to state-owned Bank Sepah, Iran’s fifth- biggest lender. On Dec. 26, a Bank Sepah branch in Tehran issued a 28,845 euro ($39,255) letter of credit on behalf of Sabalan Co. — a front company for SHIG that shares the address and phone number of the missile maker, according to a person with access to details of the transaction. The letter of credit was forwarded to Bank Sepah’s branch in Rome, where Sabalan paid its supplier — Behringer GmbH, the Kirchardt, Germany-based maker of drills and metal-cutting tools.

Christian Behringer, the German company’s co-managing director, says the purchase consisted of parts for industrial sawing machines. He says his company had no idea that a missile producer, which UN sanctions bar from buying any type of equipment, was behind the deal. Nor did he know that Bank Sepah may have helped SHIG skirt the UN prohibition.

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What the hell is a soft revolution? Must be something like Cindy Sheehan is doing. If it is, keep her in jail. I’m just kidding.

An American-Iranian academic detained for the past three months on charges of “espionage” and plotting to topple Iran’s Islamic regime was released yesterday after her family paid £160,000 bail.
Haleh Esfandiari, Middle East director of the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Centre, was freed after an ordeal that included intensive interrogations, solitary confinement and a televised “confession” of involvement in an alleged US-backed conspiracy to incite a “soft revolution”.

Judiciary officials confirmed that she had been allowed to leave Tehran’s Evin prison after her 93-year-old mother had used the deeds of her flat to post bail.

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What can I say? Someone needs to topple the barbaric bast***s.

Iran has hanged up to 30 people in the past month amid a clampdown prompted by alleged US-backed plots to topple the regime, The Observer can reveal.
Many executions have been carried out in public in an apparent bid to create a climate of intimidation while sending out uncompromising signals to the West. Opposition sources say at least three of the dead were political activists, contradicting government insistence that it is targeting ‘thugs’ and dangerous criminals. The executions have coincided with a crackdown on student activists and academics accused of trying to foment a ’soft revolution’ with US support.

The most high-profile recent executions involved Majid Kavousifar, 28, and his nephew, Hossein Kavousifar, 24, hanged for the murder of a hardline judge, Hassan Moghaddas, a man notorious for jailing political dissidents. They were hanged from cranes and hoisted high above one of Tehran’s busiest thoroughfares.
The spectacle, the first public executions in Tehran for five years, took place outside the judiciary department headquarters where Moghaddas was murdered. But the location, near many office blocks and the Australian and Japanese embassies, meant they were seen by many middle-class Iranians who would not normally witness such events.

The previous day seven men were publicly executed in the north-eastern city of Masshad, including five said to be guilty of ‘rape, kidnapping, theft and committing indecent acts’. Another two were hanged separately for raping and robbing a young woman. The executions were also shown live on state television.

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The United States has decided to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country’s 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a “specially designated global terrorist,” according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group’s business operations and finances.

The Bush administration has chosen to move against the Revolutionary Guard Corps because of what U.S. officials have described as its growing involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as its support for extremists throughout the Middle East, the sources said. The decision follows congressional pressure on the administration to toughen its stance against Tehran, as well as U.S. frustration with the ineffectiveness of U.N. resolutions against Iran’s nuclear program, officials said.

The designation of the Revolutionary Guard will be made under Executive Order 13224, which President Bush signed two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to obstruct terrorist funding. It authorizes the United States to identify individuals, businesses, charities and extremist groups engaged in terrorist activities. The Revolutionary Guard would be the first national military branch included on the list, U.S. officials said — a highly unusual move because it is part of a government, rather than a typical non-state terrorist organization.

The order allows the United States to block the assets of terrorists and to disrupt operations by foreign businesses that “provide support, services or assistance to, or otherwise associate with, terrorists.”

The situation between the United States and Iran can’t get much worse and we know the Revolutionary Guard is supplying, training and acting as terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The main goal of the new designation is to clamp down on the Revolutionary Guard’s vast business network, as well as on foreign companies conducting business linked to the military unit and its personnel. The administration plans to list many of the Revolutionary Guard’s financial operations.

“Anyone doing business with these people will have to reevaluate their actions immediately,” said a U.S. official familiar with the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the decision has not been announced. “It increases the risks of people who have until now ignored the growing list of sanctions against the Iranians. It makes clear to everyone who the IRGC and their related businesses really are. It removes the excuses for doing business with these people.”

Read the rest of the story here.

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Speaks for itself.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki met with officials in Iran on Wednesday to seek help in reining in violence in his country, reaching out to a nation the U.S. accuses of fueling Iraq’s turmoil by backing Shiite militants.

It was al-Maliki’s second visit to Tehran in less than a year, coming days after U.S. and Iranian experts held talks in Baghdad on improving Iraq’s security.

Al-Maliki and the Shiite and Kurdish parties that dominate his government are closely linked to predominantly Shiite Iran, and he has struggled to balance those ties with the United States, Tehran’s top rival in the region.

The U.S. has recently stepped up its allegations that Iran is arming Shiite militiamen, but the Iraqi government has taken a low-key stance without outright backing the American claims, which Tehran denies. One al-Maliki adviser, Sami al-Askari, said last month that the government “doesn’t rule out” Iranian arming of militants.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, U.S. troops and warplanes struck suspected militants in the Shiite district of Sadr City, killing 32 of them and detaining 12 others. The U.S. military said the militants were involved in smuggling weapons from Iran and sending militiamen to Iran for training.

Al-Maliki’s visit came as officials from Iraq and its neighbors, including Iran, held a conference in Damascus, Syria, on improving Iraq’s security. At the gathering, Iraq’s Deputy Foreign Minister Labib Abbawi pressed countries to do more to stop infiltration of fighters and weapons over their borders into Iraq.

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This story pretty much speaks for itself.

U.S., Iranian and Iraqi officials held the first meeting in Baghdad on Monday of a sub-committee intended to improve cooperation on Iraqi security among the three countries, officials said.

“It’s the sub-committee they’ve been talking about for some time now. They’re meeting today at the expert level. It’s hosted and organised by the Iraqis,” U.S. embassy spokesman Philip Reeker said.

The U.S. delegation was headed by Marcie Ries, minister-councilor for political-military affairs at the U.S. embassy, Reeker said.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Tehran’s delegation was being led by the deputy head of its mission, Amir Abdollahian.

Setting up the security sub-committee was one of the main achievements of a July 24 meeting in Baghdad between the U.S. and Iranian ambassadors in Iraq.

Washington accuses Tehran of fomenting instability in Iraq, supporting militias and providing weapons, such as armor-penetrating bombs, used to kill U.S. troops.

Tehran denies the charge and blames Iraq’s unrelenting sectarian violence on the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

The talks between the United States and Iran, which have not had diplomatic relations for almost 30 years, had their first round in May and are seen as groundbreaking.

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This Omega Letter report I got yesterday seems to tie in well with the headline I read this morning:
Hezbollah: We Are Ready to Strike Israel Again

First, the first four paragraphs from the AP story today:

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Hezbollah’s leader said Saturday that the militant Islamic group’s war last summer with Israel has left the U.S. vision of a “new Middle East” in shambles and claimed the guerrilla group was ready to strike Israel again at any time.

During the 34-day war in southern Lebanon, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for a new era of democracy and peace in the region, “a new Middle East.”

But Hezbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, said the U.S. vision aimed at reinforcing Israel.

“There is no new Middle East,” Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah told a mass rally in the southern town of Bint Jbeil, one of the towns hardest hit by the war. “It’s gone with the wind.”

Keep your eyes on Israel.

Special Report: Iran’s War Plan Emerging

This past week, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad paid a state visit to Syria to meet with Bashar al Assad, president of Syria, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, and with the senior Hamas leadership headquartered in Damascus.

During their meeting, the Syrian president promised his Iranian counterpart to refrain from opening peace negotiations with Israel in exchange for massive Iranian military aid and Tehran’s support of Syrian interests in Lebanon.

This was reported Saturday by the Saudi newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, which is published in London.

Following their lengthy meeting in Damascus, President Bashar Assad said, “I am calm today, more than ever.” After their meeting, the Iranian president also met privately with Hezbollah Secretary-General Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas political bureau director Khaled Mashaal.

According to the report, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad agreed to help Syria with nuclear research and chemical weapons and to equip its navy with surface-to-sea missiles of the type that Hezbollah used to attack the Israel Navy Hanit warship in the course of the Second Lebanon War.

It also promised to build in Syria a factory for the manufacture of medium-range missiles and to allot $1 billion to the purchase of advanced tanks and combat planes from Russia. Read the rest of this entry »

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This speaks for itself.

The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned.
The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: “Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo.”
The White House claims that Iran, whose influence in the Middle East has increased significantly over the last six years, is intent on building a nuclear weapon and is arming insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The vice-president, Dick Cheney, has long favoured upping the threat of military action against Iran. He is being resisted by the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the defence secretary, Robert Gates.

Last year Mr Bush came down in favour of Ms Rice, who along with Britain, France and Germany has been putting a diplomatic squeeze on Iran. But at a meeting of the White House, Pentagon and state department last month, Mr Cheney expressed frustration at the lack of progress and Mr Bush sided with him. “The balance has tilted. There is cause for concern,” the source said this week.

Nick Burns, the undersecretary of state responsible for Iran and a career diplomat who is one of the main advocates of negotiation, told the meeting it was likely that diplomatic manoeuvring would still be continuing in January 2009. That assessment went down badly with Mr Cheney and Mr Bush.

“Cheney has limited capital left, but if he wanted to use all his capital on this one issue, he could still have an impact,” said Patrick Cronin, the director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

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The Iranian government gave its citizens a two hour notice of gas rationing of 100 liters of fuel a month.

I’m no expert in the metric system, but I think a liter is somewhere over a quart. This would translate to about 25 gallons of gas a month.

At least 12 petrol stations have been torched in the Iranian capital, Tehran, after the government announced fuel rationing for private vehicles.
Windows were smashed and stones thrown at the stations, and there was traffic chaos as motorists queued to buy fuel.

Iranians were given only two hours’ notice of the move that limits private drivers to 100 litres of fuel a month.

Despite its huge energy reserves, Iran lacks refining capacity and it imports about 40% of its petrol.

The country has a large budget deficit largely caused by fuel subsidies and the inflation rate is estimated at 20-30%.

The BBC’s Tehran correspondent, Frances Harrison, says Iran is trying to rein in fuel consumption over fears of possible UN sanctions over its nuclear programme.

Iran fears the West could impose sanctions on its petrol imports and cripple its economy.

A country sitting on top of an oil well can’t afford for its citizens to get as much gas as they need.

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The US and Iranian ambassadors to Iraq met for four hours yesterday in the Green Zone, talking about ways to make Iraq safer.

The United States and Iran broke a 27-year diplomatic freeze yesterday with a four-hour meeting on Iraqi security. The American envoy said there was broad policy agreement but that Iran must stop arming and financing militants who are attacking U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi said in an interview that the two sides would meet again in less than a month. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said Washington would decide only after the Iraqi government issued an invitation.

“We don’t have a formal invitation to respond to just yet, so it doesn’t make sense to respond to what we don’t have,” Mr. Crocker told reporters after the meeting.

Don’t get your hopes up because Iran dismisses US charges they have armed insurgents to fight against the US and Iraqi people in Iraq.

The American envoy called the meeting “businesslike” and said at “the level of policy and principle, the Iranian position as articulated by the Iranian ambassador was very close to our own.”

However, he said: “What we would obviously like to see and the Iraqis would clearly like to see is an action by Iran on the ground to bring what it’s actually doing in line with its stated policy.”

Speaking later at a press conference in the Iranian Embassy, Mr. Kazemi said: “We don’t take the American accusations seriously.”

Mr. Crocker declined to detail what Mr. Kazemi had said in the session, but the Iranian diplomat formerly a top official in the elite Revolutionary Guards Quds Force said he had offered to train and equip the Iraqi army and police to create “a new military and security structure” for Iraq.

Mr. Kazemi said U.S. efforts to rebuild those forces were inadequate to handle the chaos in Iraq, for which he said Washington bore sole responsibility. He said he also had offered to provide what assistance Iran could in rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure, which he said had been “demolished by the American invaders.”

The icebreaking session, according to both sides, did not veer into other difficult issues that encumber the U.S.-Iranian relationship primarily Iran’s nuclear program and the more than a quarter-century history of diplomatic estrangement.

But the issues at hand portend a bruising set of talks should the two sides have follow-up meetings.

I imagine this meeting and immediate future meetings, if they are held, will show both sides carefully circling the other to see if they can get a read on the situation.

I’m not so sure having Iran train the military and police would be in the best interests of anyone, since they are suspected of training the Shiite death squads and inflitrating the current Iraqi military and police forces.

According to the report President al-Maliki spoke briefly to the two ambassadors:

He told both sides that Iraqis wanted a stable country free of foreign forces and regional interference. Iraq should not be turned into a base for terrorist groups, he said, adding that the U.S.-led forces in Iraq were only there to help rebuild the army, police and infrastructure.

The United States had no plans to stage a strike against Iran from Iraq, he said.

This is at least a first step. Perhaps it would be better if a predominantly Sunni country, say Egypt, were to try to help the two sides broker a peace agreement.

It’s going to take Shiites and Sunnis of good faith to broker any kind of peace agreement in Iraq.

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This is video taken from The Beltway Boys

It doesn’t last that long, so please listen to what they are saying.

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The above headline is directly from the San Francisco Gate.

Please pay attention to the important words “may be interested”.
It does not say they are interested or they will go.

Rep. Lantos has said he is sponsoring a bill he expects to pass in May that would make available for all nations, including Iran, nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes.

Lantos noted that “with the speaker’s support,” he has co-sponsored legislation in the House that calls for making available to all countries — including Iran — nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes under international oversight by establishing a “nuclear fuel bank.”

“So if the Iranian president says that he is developing (nuclear material) for peaceful purposes, we are assisting him in that process,” said Lantos, who anticipated the legislation could pass as early as May.

I actually think that’s the news in this piece.

Excuse me, please, while I go vomit and have a quiet nervous breakdown.

Feel free to join me in the nervous breakdown and we can all sit around like this 8-} and be blissfully ignorant of our world.

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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced the British sailors and Marines kidnapped by Iran have been pardoned and will go free.

This is wonderful news for the captives, their families and Great Britain.

TEHRAN, Iran — Fifteen British sailors and marines seized by Iranian naval personnel have been pardoned and will be freed, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at a press conference Wednesday, but he vowed his country would not tolerate invasions of its borders by any country.

“I announce that the great people of Iran and the Islamic Republic, even having legal rights to try these military people, in honor of the prophet’s birthday, will be freed as a gift to the people of the United Kingdom,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech to reporters, clerics and civil servants in a small hall in Tehran.

In response to a reporter’s question, Ahmadinejad said the British troops would be freed at the end of the press conference.

Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office said it “welcomes” the news that troops would be freed.

Then he interrupted the news conference to pin medals on the captors.

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According to this UK newspaper the capture of the 15 British Marines and sailors is all the fault of the United States for taking Iranian hostages in Iraq.

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.

Yada, yada, yada.

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She certainly looks thrilled to be there to me. NOT!

Great Britain says GPS devices show the sailors and marines were 1.7 nautical miles inside Iraqi waters. They were, by the way, performing a mission for the UN.

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Iran has announced the British hostages will be paraded on television but they will release the female hostage.

If they show them in big red and white striped outfits I’ll swear I’m living Groundhog Day and it’s Hanoi circa the late 60’s and early 70’s.

While at the dentist’s office today they had CNN on (I know, but it’s their TV ) and they showed the GPS system with a photo of the exact location of the boat when it was captured. It was 1.7 nautical miles inside the Iraqi waters doing a routine UN patrol.

The story went on to say the Iranians even confirmed the co-ordinates in correspondence to the British and when the British pointed it out and asked for their troops back the Iranians gave them different co-ordinates.

I’m interested to see how this all plays out.

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From this report:

LONDON — Iran said Monday it was interrogating 15 detained British sailors and marines to determine whether they intentionally entered Iranian waters — an indication the country might be seeking a way out of the confrontation with Britain.

Britain denies its personnel had left Iraqi territory when they were captured and detained by Iran — a contention backed by Iraq’s foreign minister, who called on Iran to release the group.

In comments read out by a newscaster, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mehzi Mostafavi did not say what Iran plans to do with the British sailors, but he said they were being interrogated.

“It should become clear whether their entry (into Iran) was intentional or unintentional. After that is clarified, the necessary decision will be made,” Mostafavi said.

Britain and the United States have said the sailors and marines were intercepted Friday just after they completed a search of a civilian vessel in the Iraqi part of the Shatt al-Arab waterway leading to the Persian Gulf, where the border with Iran has historically been disputed.

Separately, Iran’s ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Baghdad that there was no connection between the seizures of the 15 and any other issues between the West and Iran. He, like Mostafavi, denied any aim for a prisoner swap. [And if you believe that I have a bridge to sell you in the middle of the desert in Arizona. Ed.]

“They entered Iranian territorial waters and were arrested and are undergoing the process of investigation and interrogation. It has nothing to do with other issues,” he said.

The United States holds at least five Iranians taken captive in Iraq, claiming they part of an Iranian Revolutionary Guard force that provides funds, weapons and training to Shiite militias in Iraq.

The question of where exactly the 15 Britons were when detained has proved impossible to confirm independently, with Britain asserting they were in Iraqi waters but refusing to release precise geographical data and Iran asserting the opposite.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office sought to play down fears that the incident would deepen tensions with Iran, which threatened to charge the 15 with illegally entering its territory.

The seizure of the British service personnel has deepened troubles between Iran and the West, which is concerned about Iran’s nuclear program and accused the country of interfering with the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Blair’s spokesman said he intended to treat the seizure as a distinct issue. “This is a matter that should be dealt with on its own merits,” he said.

Iran rejected British requests to visit the group.

Let us pray that these men and woman return safely very soon.

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Anyone who has been reading or watching the news since Friday knows fifteen British sailors and marines (including one woman) have been captured by the Revolutionary Guards of Iran for supposedly being in Iranian waters while on a patrol in Iraqi waters while searching for smugglers.

The Brits claim they were in Iraqi waters and the Iranians claim they were in Iranian waters. At any rate the sailors and marines are now in Tehran on an unexpected detour and Iran is claiming they will charge them with espionage, which carries the death penalty under Iranian Islamic law.

The Times Online reports:

FIFTEEN British sailors and marines arrested by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards off the coast of Iraq may be charged with spying.

A website run by associates of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, reported last night that the Britons would be put before a court and indicted.

Referring to them as “insurgents”, the site concluded: “If it is proven that they deliberately entered Iranian territory, they will be charged with espionage. If that is proven, they can expect a very serious penalty since according to Iranian law, espionage is one of the most serious offences.”

The warning followed claims by Iranian officials that the British navy personnel had been taken to Tehran, the capital, to explain their “aggressive action” in entering Iranian waters. British officials insist the servicemen were in Iraqi waters when they were held.

The penalty for espionage in Iran is death. However, similar accusations of spying were made when eight British servicemen were detained in the same area in 2004. They were paraded blindfolded on television but did not appear in court and were freed after three nights in detention.

Iranian student groups called yesterday for the 15 detainees to be held until US forces released five Revolutionary Guards captured in Iraq earlier this year.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat, a Saudi-owned newspaper based in London, quoted an Iranian military source as saying that the aim was to trade the Royal Marines and sailors for these Guards.

The claim was backed by other sources in Tehran. “As soon as the corps’s five members are released, the Britons can go home,” said one source close to the Guards.

He said the tactic had been approved by Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, who warned last week that Tehran would take “illegal actions” if necessary to maintain its right to develop a nuclear programme.

There are some missing Iranian agents from Iraq, so this demand makes some sense.

At the same time there have been a couple of defections of high-ranking Iranians the Iranians would love to get back and give them a dose of Islamic justice.

Subhi Sadek, the Guards’ weekly newspaper, warned last weekend that the force had “the ability to capture a bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks”.

Safavi is known to be furious about the recent defections to the West of three senior Guards officers, including a general, and the effect of UN sanctions on his own finances.

There are some Iraqi fishermen who have convinced an Iraqi general the Brits were in Iranian waters, but the British deny it, saying the last time this happened GPS devices proved they were in Iraqi waters and he is certain this will be the case also.

Meanwhile, this Fox News report states British Prime Minister is determined to get this situation solved as soon and as diplomatically as possible.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Sunday that the 15 British sailors and marines captured by Iran as they searched for smugglers off the Iraqi coast were not in Iranian waters and warned that Britain viewed their situation as “very serious.”

The group was seized at gunpoint on Friday, and the Foreign Office in London said British officials do not know where Iran is holding them.

Speaking at an EU summit in Berlin, Blair said Iran’s claim that the sailors had crossed into Iranian territorial waters “is simply not true.”

“I want to get [the situation] resolved in as easy and diplomatic a way as possible,” Blair said, but added he hoped the Iranians “understood how fundamental an issue this is for the British government.”

Britain said its diplomats met with Iranian officials in Tehran on Sunday where their demand for access to the group was denied after Iran refused to say where they were being held.

“This is a very serious situation,” Blair said.

We’ll soon see if it’s spies they want or if they really believe these sailors and marines breeched their waters.

Either way I pray for a peaceful solution to this mess.

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