Latitude & Attitude - Iranian miscalculations

(Originally posted March 30, 2007)


It never ceases to amaze me how some governments have a complete end utter lack of understanding of what is clever and what is definitely not, when it comes to dealing with the western civilisation.

It is often, but not always, regimes with cultural roots in Islam that make the biggest blunders and this time around is no different. Iran has taken hostage 15 British service men/women in the Persian Gulf.

Let there be no mistake: this is an act of hostage taking. It is not a matter of taking prisoners of war, as there are no hostilities between the two countries. The act has been conducted purely as a means of extracting concessions of one kind or another on the part of Britain, this is clear for all to see.

What those concessions might be is a matter of pure speculation, but the fact that the US has a number of Iranian prisoners in Iraq, supposedly intelligence staff from the Revolutionary Guard aiding insurgents in the war torn country is as good a guess as any other.

Why is it doubtlessly an act of hostage taking? Because if - hypothetically - the service men had for any reason ventured into Iranian waters, lets say as a result of poor navigation skills, it would be the simplest matter in the world to order them out of the waters. There is absolutely no reason why the men and one woman should be sequestered and kept isolated from diplomats of the UK. But the Iranians decided to create a diplomatic crisis on purpose.

Doing that is bad enough. But to add further stupidity to an already unnecessary act, the Iranian government has decided to use the service men as a propaganda tool, parading them on national TV. And continuing down the path of stupidity, they present the world with a letter from one of the captives, apologising for the intrusion into Iranian waters and urging the UK to withdraw its troops from Iraq. Of course we are all to believe that the letter is a spontaneous production by a remorseful soldier. To make matters even worse, the government then decides not to release the female hostage as previously promised. This, of course, further strengthens our trust in their words.

Every single act described here is head-shakingly stupid and what the Iranian regime does not understand is that those acts just fills westerners with disgust. Not fear, not awe, not admiration, but utter disgust.

It was exactly the same mistake Saddam Hussein made, when he held Westerners hostage in Iraq prior to the first Gulf War, parading little children in front of the cameras, patting them on their heads.

By every political act whether supporting Hamas, Hezbollah, Muqtada el Sadr, or refusing to comply with the UN on the matter of uranium enrichment, the Iranian government establishes itself as an enemy of the West and indeed of the most of the civilized world. If not exactly respected, at least that type of stance can be reluctantly understood as political positioning. It does not attract disgust.

Creating disgust is much more dangerous for the Iranians. The feeling of disgust feeds the feeling of worthlessness towards all Iranians. This is especially true as the regime does not allow voices of dissent to remind us that the Iranian people are not its government.

But by filling our minds with disgust for them, the Iranians have without realising it created a mental space in our brains that will much easier tolerate an eventual act of war against them.

Only the future will show if a Third Gulf War will take place as the result of the Iranian government's insistence on developing uranium enrichment. I hope not. But one thing is sure, if it does take place, I will feel less bad about it because the Iranian government has given me the mental space to despise them and be disgusted with them.

That is the true miscalculation by Iran.