It has been announced that as a "gift" to Britain the 15 sailors captured by Iran will be freed. This is great news and some confirmation that a diplomatic approach was worth persevering with.
One interesting side effect of this crisis is that a lot of people have done a lot of thinking about how we can influence Iran without direct military action and even with limited multilateral support. Attacking export credit guarantees or attempting to cut off their gasoline supply through a blockade and attack on their one refinery were the most recent suggestions. Isn't it worth considering those as responses to the Iranian nuclear programme?
Another interesting side effect is a lot of questions about British power, the British military and the British spirit. A lot of questions have been raised but very few answers offered. Those answers are clearly a key project for the coming months and years. The importance of addressing these questions has been thrown into sharp relief by this crisis.
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3 comments:
A gift, huh?
I was talking to my dad this morning and he related this story to me... then he said something like, "We rubbed your faces in the dirt, but now we're letting you get up... as a gift, you understand, out of the goodness of our hearts. Isn't diplomacy wonderful?"
I wonder how Margaret Thatcher would have handled this situation. Certainly not the way Blair handled it.
This whole thing was political in the extreme. Iain Dale had something on this.
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