A Provocation Backfires

Were the Brits ginning up a pretext for war in the Gulf?

By Justin Raimondo

".....This entire incident has been extremely odd, alright, but it isn't the Iranians who made it so. The behavior of the captured Brits is what struck me as truly bizarre. After all, two of them went on Iranian television, and, standing in front of a map, pointed out precisely where they were picked up by their captors – in what are clearly Iranian waters. Their televised apologies, it's true, were a violation of the Geneva conventions, but we in the West are hardly in the best position to raise that issue......

In any case, that was some pretty powerful – and convincing – video that the Iranians put out there, with relaxed and completely natural-looking-and -acting British sailors basically backing up what the Iranians said from the beginning. I agree with John McLaughlin: the Brits haven't been "entirely level with the world." Not that this would come as a surprise: as McLaughlin points out, Blair has long been among the chief manufacturers of alibis for the Bush administration.

The statements of the British sailors merely tend to confirm previously expressed doubts as to the actual coordinates released by the Brits. And now we hear the news – just released by Sky News – that they had been withholding an interview with one of the captives, Chris Air, filmed before his capture, in which he said they were indeed gathering intelligence on the Iranians. What it all adds up to, given what we know so far, is an incursion into Iranian waters that was in all likelihood deliberate......

Far from signaling a let up in the escalation of tensions, we are bound to see more such incidents – one of which will prove to be the tripwire for war......

We can stop the next war before it starts – but only if we catch the War Party at their game while they're playing it, and not after the fact, as in the case of Iraq. The Democrats are keen to cut off funding for a war that should never have started and could not have started without their cooperation: will they have the foresight and courage to defund the covert war against Iran before it becomes overt? I am not at all optimistic about this, but I'd be glad to be proven wrong......

The regime-changers, after all, are still in charge: Bush is a lame-duck, but he's still the big duck, and Blair is leaving, but isn't yet gone. Together, these two can do a lot more damage before they're safely out of office – and, given half a chance, they will.

The War Party may be discredited, reeling with defections, and genuinely hated by the majority of the English-speaking peoples, but I wouldn't count them out quite yet. The drama of the fifteen captives was just the beginning: there are plenty more provocations where that came from. This one backfired, it's true, but the danger is not past, or even decreased – because the next one may well succeed in sparking a conflict that will make the Iraq war look like a picnic in the park."