These British sailors are obviously together and clean. They don’t look as if they have been sleep deprived and don’t have any marks on them as if they had been tortured. They have all signed statements that they were in Iranian waters.
That statement, whether it is true or not, is no reason to keep them away from their families that want them freed. The British government would be wise to just admit that they might have strayed into Iranian waters in order to free these sailors. There comes a moral point where admitting a mistake was made than to feed the flames of a possible war and to subject those British Sailors to more imprisonment. If it will get these people home to their families or at least out of harm’s way, then go ahead and say what you must to protect your people. This is not an issue that is worth anyone dying over, or to start a war over.
If the Brits were in Iraqi waters it doesn’t really matter if they admit to straying into Iranian waters. If they were in Iranian waters that’s no big deal either. Both lines on the boundary are man made and really matter very little in the broad scope of human events. These lines on a map are merely lines; they are not important enough to warrant thousands of dead on both sides. When all is said and done on this issue, it will be regulated to the dust bin of history. Not important enough to have been included in any textbook about the Middle East.
This is a situation that Iran should try to walk away from. Israel is chomping at the bit to destroy their Uranium Enrichment facilities, and the United States is eager to put the war in Iraq on a back burner, and military action with Iran would do just that. Iran has nothing to prove by following this hard-line stance. They seem to be falling into the NeoCon game plan in the mid-east of allowing a wider war that will pit the US against another Middle-eastern country. This could be the fore-runner of huge military bases and a never-ending war in that part of the world.
This entire scenario seems to have been written by a third rate novelist. If the truth be known, I believe that Karl Rove and all the rest of Bush’s advisors have been reading too many Tom Chancy novels. In this current situation over the British Sailors, let’s hope that Iran uses it’s head and not it’s passion in making a decision on how to proceed.