If They Hate Us, Let Them Also Fear Us
From the London Telegraph on the captured sailors and marines:
There is also, perhaps, a feeling of impotence: if we can't invade Iran, what else can we do? Plenty of things. We can, of course, pull diplomatic and economic levers. This will involve going through Brussels, not so much because we need a favour as because we have no independent trade policy: the only way that Britain can impose sanctions on Iran is if the EU does so. At the same time, we could be seizing Iranian assets. Longer term, we could be putting pressure on the regime by sponsoring its opponents. We could launch tactical strikes at Iranian military installations. We could even, in extremis, impose the kind of armed siege, complete with no-fly-zone, that paralysed Saddam in the years between the two Iraq wars: we already maintain large coalition garrisons on both Iran's flanks. Limiting ourselves to trivial resolutions will be treated by the ayatollahs as a sign of weakness. If they hate us, let them also fear us.Iran has no reason to fear the French:
France, Iran’s second-largest EU trading partner, cautioned that further confrontation should be avoided. The Dutch said it was important not to risk a breakdown in dialogue.Ed Morrissey:
All of a sudden, those "large coalition garrisons" look pretty strategic, don't they? I'm always amazed by the people who claim that we screwed up the war on terror by going after Iraq rather than Iran. If people could learn to read a map, they could see what we have attempted -- a military and political encirclement of Iran that no one could have dreamed six years ago. Why do people think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pulled this stunt? He wants to drive the UK out of the coalition in order to break that encirclement. It may finally dawn on Britain that the failure to have an independent trade policy has hamstrung them politically and militarily. Iran attacked a British ship, and yet Britain cannot stop trading with Iran because Brussels controls their trade policies. When one gives up sovereignty, these are the consequences. If Britain wants their people back, they have two choices. They can either submit to Iran, or they can escalate the conflict to the point where it damages the mullahcracy. They had better commence deciding between the two.UPDATE: Mark Steyn is decidedly pessimistic:
But, as a point of law, they are also "citizens of the European Union." . . . So if Europe is as it claims to be, what's it going to do about it?'' Short answer: Nothing. . . . HMS Cornwall is the base for multinational marine security patrols in the Gulf: a mission authorized by the United Nations. So what's the U.N. doing about this affront to its authority and (in the public humiliation of the captives) of the Geneva Conventions? Short answer: Nothing. . . . So we live today in a world of one-way sovereignty: American, British and Iraqi forces in Iraq respect the Syrian and Iranian borders; the Syrians and Iranians do not respect the Iraqi border. Patrolling the Shatt al-Arab at a time of war, the Royal Navy operates under rules of engagement designed by distant fainthearts with an eye to the polite fictions of "international law": If you're in a ''warship,'' you can't wage war. If you're in a ''destroyer,'' don't destroy anything. If you're in a "frigate," you're frigging done for. On Sept. 11, a New York skyscraper was brought down by the Egyptian leader of a German cell of an Afghan terror group led by a Saudi. Islamism is only the first of many globalized ideological viruses that will seep undetected across national frontiers in the years ahead. Meanwhile, we put our faith in meetings of foreign ministers. "It is better to be making the news than taking it," wrote Winston Churchill in 1898. But his successors have gotten used to taking it, and the men who make the news well understand that.UPDATE II: More from Malcolm Rifkind: Europe has failed us in the Iran crisis. But, as Glenn Reynolds notes:
No surprise. Failing its allies is what Europe does.