Tit for Tat
Captain Queeg is furious that Iran has detained four Iranian-Americans accused of spying. The charges are almost surely bogus, and the detentions almost certainly political statements.
“Their presence in Iran — to visit their parents or to conduct humanitarian work — poses no threat,” the Bush statement said. “Indeed, their activities are typical of the abiding ties that Iranian-Americans have with their land of origin.”
Bush cited scholar Haleh Esfandiari of the Smithsonian’s Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, social scientist Kian Tajbakhsh, Radio Farda correspondent Parnaz Azima, and California businessman Ali Shakeri.
Bush also said he was “disturbed” by Tehran’s refusal to provide information on former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared after flying to Iran’s Kish Island on March 8. Tehran has failed to provide information or to respond to five messages channeled through the Swiss Embassy to the Iranian government about Levinson.
I wonder if Bush realizes how stupid he looks. After all, it was the US who seized 6 Iranian diplomats invited to Kurdistan in February
According to [Iraqi] Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the detained Iranians had been working in Arbil with official sanction, and the liaison office was in the process to become a full consulate. Officials of the Regional Government said that consular activities, such as the issuance of visas, had been carried out by the office staff since 1992, and they were treated as if they were accredited diplomats.
In a report which was later confirmed by Massoud Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Regional Government, The Independent noted that instead of the current captives, the U.S. had hoped to capture the deputy head of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, Mohammed Jafari, and chief of intelligence of the IRGC, General Manuchehr Frouzandeh, who were on an official visit to Iraq to improve co-operation in the area of bilateral security, during which they met the Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. Barzani stated: “They (the commanders) came here and they came openly. Their meetings with the president and myself were reported on television. The Americans came to detain this delegation, not the people in the office. They came to the wrong place at the wrong time.”
It’s my understanding the captured Iranians are being interrogated (I wonder if this involves our Gestapo tactics “enhanced interrogation techniques borrowed from the Nazis”) at a prison camp in Iraq.
I don’t expect the Iranians to release their prisoners any time soon: why would they when their own diplomats are being held incommunicado? I realize that here in the US, everyone’s expected to say “how high” when The Decider says “jump”, but as the Decider is finding out, tain’t necessarily so outside the bubble.
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