Details below the fold.
Now with UPDATE
TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has met with some of the 15 British military personnel held in Iranian custody, shortly after pardoning the group and vowing to set them free.
Iranian state television showed footage of Ahmadinejad shaking hands, smiling and chatting with the detainees. One of the 15 was heard to comment in English: “We are grateful for your forgiveness.”
Ahmadinejad announced the amnesty at the end of a lengthy news conference on Wednesday in which he said the 15 detainees had violated Iran’s territorial waters, calling their release “a gift to the British people.”
“I declare that the people of Iran and the government of Iran — in full power to place on trial the military people — to give amnesty and pardon to these 15 people and I announce their freedom and their return to the people of Britain,” Ahmadinejad told a news conference.
The action was a goodwill gesture for the Iranian new year, he said, adding that Iran had received a letter from Britain promising not to intrude into Iranian waters.
“The British government sent a letter to our Foreign Ministry and said it would not happen again. Of course, our decision had nothing to do with the letter. It’s a decision made by our government to give a gift to the people of Britain,” Ahmadinejad said in answer to a reporter’s question.
I guess Tony Blair didn’t want the drama of these 15 British captives to be Bush’s excuse for air strikes Iran, after all. From the looks of things, both sides backed down from their earlier hard-line positions. Iran was demanding that Britain confess it had violated their territorial waters, and Britain was demanding a release of the 15 British sailors and marines without any conditions. Obviously, the letter from the British Ministry was the catalyst for both sides to save face, and allow the release of the British captives to proceed, despite what Ahmadinejad said at his press conference. Praise be to whomever or whatever that common sense prevailed in this instance. If this had been American sailors who had been captured, you can be assured the bombs would already be dropping on Tehran.
Update [2007-4-4 11:16:44 by Steven D]: I also wonder if this event yesterday had something to do with the release of the Brits:
DUBAI: A series of developments including the release of an Iranian diplomat in Iraq have raised hopes that the standoff between Britain and Iran over the seizure of 15 British sailors may be coming to a close.
The Iranian embassy in Baghdad said on Tuesday that Jalal Sharafi, its second secretary, had been released. Mr. Sharafi was seized in Baghdad in February by gunmen outside the branch of the Iranian state-owned Bank Melli. “Yes, he was released yesterday [Monday],” an official at the Iranian embassy in Baghdad was quoted as saying. The diplomat is expected to return to Tehran later on Tuesday.
Iraqi officials have said they are working on the release of the five other Iranian nationals seized by the Americansfrom an Iranian official building in Irbil. Analysts point out that the possible release of seized Iranians and the fate of the British soldiers might get interlinked. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Tuesday the next two days were “fairly critical” to resolving the dispute. His remarks came after Iran’s national security head Ali Larijani made conciliatory remarks.
My guess is that it did.
The Bush Administration can take notes as to how to solve international crises without killing people by the thousands. Israel can take note also as their one soldier who was taken hostage while in Lebanon is still captive even after all the bombs dropped on Beirut. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Tony Blair saw that there was obviously more for both sides to gain by solving this matter peacefully. Their next project should be to try to negotiate a ceasefire among the various factions in Iraq.
a glimpse of sanity amidst the chaos…and isn’t it peculiar the the seizure if the 5 Iranians in Arbil should warrant mention…indeed,The Independent UK has this to say about the lead up to the seizure of the Brits:
damned interesting, eh wot…
See… Diplomacy and negotiations can work. Imagine that… do you think the Bush Administration will even acknowledge that?
No, I don’t either.
But this is a savvy move for Tehran. They get to demonstrate how reasonable and sane they are even when provoked, even while they can claim that they were in the right to seize the British sailors to begin with. It establishes a precedent for any future “incidents” and pre-empts (at least in theory, in the eyes of the rest of the world, including strong US allies) any future attempts by the US to use a similar incident as an excuse for war. Iran has proven that while it is not going to back down from its right to defend its territory, it is also willing to negotiate in good faith and act like a reasonable member of the international community.
Glad to hear the news…. maybe sanity may yet prevail after all. Keeping my fingers crossed.
The Iranians didn’t release them based on some letter. They got the disputed water border written in stone and to their liking, I guarantee. If the Brits recognize the border, the US and most importantly in the long run, Iraq must also.
If there was to be a detainee trade for the Irbil 5, it would probably would have happened by now, or will simultaneous to the Brits actual release – Iran would not just trust that it would happen after the fact.
A gift to the British people? Brilliant stuff. Either Iranians are chess players too, or they’ve been talking with the Russians. We need some deeper thinkers in the Administration, like a Zbigniew Brzezinski or somebody who can see the whole system and maintains different models for the future in his head without making a ton of false assumptions. You know, the ‘Vision Thing’ that Bush I also famously lacked.
Of the potential candidates for the Democratic nomination, I can see it obviously in Gore (knows important info when he sees it), Obama (makes correct predictive models based on proper methodological interpretation of evidence) and Richardson (consistently identifies critical areas and effects positive change), but sadly no one else. Biden has good policy, but I think he is still just taking the work of others and claiming it as his own (Partition).
The others are fatally flawed as either unelectable ideologues, self-promoters or lackeys. Does anyone else see the Vision Thing among other Dems?
If they did get that concession no one is reporting it. I also doubt that the US and the Iraqi government will feel bound by whatever concessions Britain may or may not have given to Iran.
I agree that Gore would make an excellent “deicider” in the area of foreign policy. The trouble is I don’t think he will run. Obama? I know too little about him to know how he would deal with a foreign policy crisis. Richardson is more likely to be the next Sec’y of State or Veep than he is President.
Just my opinion.
Once a border is drawn (remember the Brits are the primary occupiers of the area), it would be a difficult parse to say the border is here for us but there for this party, and there for that one. Forget the legal process to draw an ‘official’ border, the border is effectively redrawn right now. How many coaliscious ships will be heading off to that same patch of water now?
Everytime we do something as stupid as abducting Iranian nobodies for no reason, we’ll lose a little more turf/leverage. It’s odd that this administration ignores everything we’ve learned about blow-back from our Iran policy. I obviously agree with those that say they are instigating war, as it is the only reason to act so stupidly.
At the very least what is it that they don’t understand about Homefield advantage. Maybe that is why Bush/Cheney didn’t throw out the first pitch of a openning day baseball game: they didn’t want to be reminded that even if the visiting team routes the home team, the home team is not going to move to another city. Bill Maher made the piont well in his interview with Maddy Albright: the insurgents can wait 100 years.
If we stay on course, Iraq is our Palestine, oil prices are pegged just below the point where processing Sour crude for gasoline becomes profiatble (and Venezuela assumes it’s role as a dominator of oil-based energy markets). This will prevent the adoption by the US of most alternate feuls except when subsidized, which will then require further resource wars until ultimately, the US controls world energy resources and therefore the world. All justified in the back of American’s heads by the threat of living with expensive transportation costs and inconvenience.
This situation requires the introduction of a disruptive technology that breaks the value of oil and removes the impetous for all of this.
how about Gore as UN Ambassador? That would put him in a perfect position for work on global warming as well as other foreign policy negotiations…
Chess was invented in Iran, you know. “Checkmate” comes ultimately from the Persian phrase “shah e mat” meaning “the King is dead.”
I agree, this was a smart move on Tehran’s part. I don’t see how they can possibly lose by doing this.
Hi Omir, this is what I absolutely love about reading comments…learning a new ‘fact’ like the one about chess(which I have absolutely no idea how to play) and why I loved the game Trivial Pursuit so much. Having an arsenal of unrelated facts floating around in my head makes me appear-to some anyway-to be much much smarter than I really am.
As for Iran, yeah I think this will end up a win/win situation for them in the short and long run. Chess playing indeed.
My mind is an amazing junk heap. I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday. I have no idea what my office phone number is without looking in the directory. But boy, I can tell you how many bones there are in a human body, or why Ty Cobb’s number was never retired. And I’m certain that the capital of Albania moved into the memory space that by rights ought to be occupied by my mother’s birthday.
It’s hard to get anyone to play Trivial Pursuit with me any more. 🙁
My favorite was the Silver Screen Edition…how many bones are there in the human body?
Babies have over 300 (I can’t remember exactly how many) but some of them fuse together as they grow to form the standard 206. Most notable of those are in the skull, which has several separate sections at birth to allow the head to fit through the birth canal. They fuse together to form a solid whole as the child grows.
Some children fuse more than others, of course. I would swear that one of my sons’ skullbones has fused all the way through to his clavicle, he’s got such a hard head.
To me, it looks like Ahmadinejad posed a gut test to Bush and Blair. It was pretty clear that Bush was going for intimidation/provocation games against Iran. If Iran would just had allowed Bush deep into those games while standing “stoic”, Bush would have gone further and further. It’s no win game for Iran. So they “overreacted” to a hike of the British sailors, surprising Bush and Blair handily. Most importantly, it checked the real commitment of Blair and Bush – and ha-ha, how low their commitment for engagement was. Blair pissed into pants, Bush even more so – even if Bush has an excuse that US was not involved, the contrast between pre-incident rhetorics against supposed Iran involvement in Iraq bombings on one hand, and the emphatic sideline pose now, is just stark.
I am sure that Ahmadinejad did not want much more from the incident. He “had” to do this to prevent annoying rhetorics and intimidative actions from Bush. What else he could have done to deal with that?
As pointed out below, the Iranians invented Chess. When I heard the news, I actually laughed out loud. The Iranians achieved a great deal.
I don’t play chess, but from the unfolding of events, it seems as if this game is a “blood sport”, without the blood.
Perhaps this is also a good time for a bit of self-reflection by those who automatically bought the “Iraqi waters” line and accused Iran of taking “hostages”
Not to mention those who simply bought the UK MOD claim that Iran had given two different locations as if they were making things up (in fact they provided four locations, because they were showing the course that the boat had taken into their claimed waters.)
Chess is often said to have either been invented in Iran, or was further developed/refined as it was passed from India via Iran to Europe. Some of the terms in chess are indeed Persian – “check mate” but in Europe the Elephant is a Bishop, and the Vizier (Prime Minister) is a Queen. Backgamon is also quite common.