With all the fuss about Iran's capture and detention of fifteen British sailors and marines a week ago, very few in the media have wondered where the normally outspoken president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, stands on the issue. Western governments generally, and the Western media in particular, have elevated Dr. Ahmadinejad to the status of an iron-fisted dictator; one whose words must be taken very seriously and therefore based on those words, someone who cannot be trusted with nuclear technology.
President Ahmadinejad, whose uncanny ability to offend whenever he opens his mouth regardless of what words he utters has made him the Western world's bete noire, has been largely absent from the current crisis over the British servicemen and woman. For perhaps the first time since his inauguration, he has followed the rules of the presidency and stayed away from issues not in his purview. Those issues, in case anyone cares to remember, include foreign policy, nuclear policy, and military issues. Foreign policy and the nuclear policy are set by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the military (including the separate Revolutionary Guards who captured the British sailors) also report directly to him. Never one to shy from making an issue his own, Ahmadinejad has this time either listened to a direct order from the Supreme Leader to not publicly interfere, or has simply decided that given the precarious state of Iran's relations with the outside world, for which he is partly responsible, his input could hardly be seen as constructive by anyone, including many inside the government.
Given Dr. Ahmadinejad's absence from the scene, one has to conclude that he and the organs of government he does control were not responsible for the arrest of the British sailors, nor are they responsible for their detention in Tehran now. The decision to release the detainees will be taken by the Supreme Leader, but not until he is satisfied that Iran's goals have been accomplished. And what could those goals be? They are not, as some have suggested, a hostage exchange with the Americans (who hold Iranian government officials) in Iraq. The fact that that was ruled out emphatically from the start of the crisis by Iranians authorized to speak on the issue is evidence enough that Iran is not looking to start another hostage crisis. Iran's military is, quite naturally given the circumstances, on a war footing these days. U.S. and British military threats, combined with the fact that Iran is surrounded by their forces, has caused the leadership in Tehran to view any military activity near their borders, including maritime ones, with deep suspicion. One can hardly fault the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' navy their zeal in pursuing any perceived incursion into their waters, nor can one fault the Iranians casting a suspicious eye on what the British have characterized the HMS Cornwall's mission in the Persian Gulf to be, that is, at least in this case, to inspect ships suspected of carrying smuggled cars. Cars? Are the Iranians the only ones wondering what the Royal Navy is doing acting as glorified Iraqi customs officials? Iranians, who have for longer than memory serves viewed British intent in their region with far greater suspicion that either U.S. or Russian intent, can be forgiven for their paranoia in finding it difficult, under current circumstances, to believe that heavily armed sailors, funded by the British taxpayer, are bouncing about the Gulf very near (if not in) their territorial waters simply to intercept bootleg automobiles. Iranians, perhaps better than anyone else, know that Iraq's and the coalition forces' problems there do not begin or end with smuggled cars, unless of course, they happen to be pre-packed with sticks of dynamite. Britain's nefarious intent is magnified in Iranian minds by the fact that the BBC, the British state-owned network, has been referring to the Persian Gulf as the Arabian Gulf in reference to the crisis, at least in its international broadcasts seen in the United States on Public Television and across the world by satellite. A sore subject for Iranians, as the English well know.
Whether or not the British sailors strayed into Iranian waters, accidentally or otherwise, and whether or not their true mission was to look for cars, at least one Iranian intention in their capture was to show the West that it has a capable navy and can respond quickly to any threats. Parading them on TV, as odious as that may be to Westerners (as odious as the orange jump-suited and shackled suspects in Guantanamo?), is intended to show Iran's might to the Arab world (given that the TV station chosen to air the footage is Iran's only Arabic language satellite network, and one that is not watched by Iranians). Now the Iranians want an apology from the British. The goal at the beginning of the crisis was in all probability an Iranian counter-move against British and U.S. moves in their back yard, or back yard pool in this case. Their goal now is to extract an apology and a promise to never do it (venture into Iranian-claimed waters) again (as they got in 2004 in a similar, shorter-lived incident), which will simply show the world that they are not intimidated by the glory of the British (or American) Empire. The British can end this crisis right now very easily by doing just that, and they can employ Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's language in doing so to save face. President Ahmadinejad, in his much-derided statement on the Holocaust, said that "if it happened, then why should Muslims pay the price?" He later denied that his statement was a denial of the Holocaust, even though the word "if" made it so, or at the very least made it questionable. The British apology could read, "If we strayed into Iranian waters, we're very sorry indeed." To the Iranians, they can say that they are not denying they violated Iranian territory, just as President Ahmadinejad's statement wasn't a denial of the Holocaust. To the rest of the world, the word "if"......