Wednesday, March 28, 2007

No News is Good News... or Not

“I can only come over if I can accept a call from a radio station,” a friend said to us last night. We thought: cool, we’ll get the scoop on the 15 British Sailors. Well, turns out he didn’t know any more than we do, which is not all that much, but probably more than many of you know.

Is no news good news?

In most of the cases no news is good news, but since lately Iran doesn’t do things like any other places do this may not be the case here.

Since last Friday, I have had the TV remote control glued to my hand. In Tehran, it is raining, and we did not go away for holidays, so I am trying non-stop to get a little bit of news about the 15 sailors who ware captured 5 days ago. So far my only sources about this incident are the internet and foreign media outlets. My couple of attempts to get any news from the Iranian government official web site or the TV news were very disappointing. Here in Iran, the government has a different take on news: they are in the business of getting news and information rather than providing it.

Imagine the deputy foreign minister of Iran meeting with Geoffrey Adams, the British ambassador in Iran and asking him: whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat’s up? Here it is not just “what is up?” “how are you?” like it is in the Budweiser commercials but more like “hey Mr. Adams do you have any news of your 15 sailors, because we sure don’t have any?” Here in Iran most people are on vacation. My brother called me yesterday, and he didn’t even have any idea that this had happened. “Didn’t you see the news?” I asked him. “No,” he said. He is like most Iranians: he is enjoying the new year holidays not worrying about sanctions and territorial waters.


I still want to know if they were in our waters or not. This should not be very difficult for Iran to prove considering all the advanced equipment Iran has got. Certainly, if we can enrich uranium, we have GPS systems. Right? Our foreign minister, like the British one did, can go in front of Iran’s parliament and show our evidence. Why should they ask the British sailors to tell them if they were in Iranian waters?

Today I am almost 100 % convinced that those sailors were not in Iranian waters. It is not just because I saw a live report of Margaret Beckett on the floor of the British parliament. I believe this because it is the first time I see the west, in this case UK, show evidence in a lot of detail, publicly, and very quickly. Usually we just hear that we will show you evidence, but it never really gets shown.

Margaret Beckett’s announcement that British government stopping all bilateral business activities until this issue is solved, is really bad news. It just means that we are starting the year with even more problems.

As I said before in my other posting, even if the sailors were in our waters, the problem could have been solved by using something called megaphones. Iran should and could use this tool more often to prevent anybody getting into our waters. This high tech device could prevent a lot of international crises.

The good news is that we hear that the 15 sailors are well & in good condition. Iran may release the one woman in the group in good faith. That is good but not good enough I fear.

In Iran, we say that you know if the coming year will be good by Spring time. It looks like we are starting off this year all wrong.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm afraid this just might be the "last straw." The Americans are sniffing around Iranian waters currently, playing war games with their carriers. There is rumor that a military strike might be coming.

Sigh, you've got to love it when a western power goes unchecked by the rest of the world.

Anonymous said...

"A strike might be coming?" Hey Daniel, where are your sources?

What does this blog topic have anything to do with western powers being unchecked? You USA haters love any excuse to bemoan the United States, I think what we need now is level headedness and good faith, not rhetoric.

Anonymous said...

well dear Keivan,no news IS good news;look at this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/iran/story/2007/03/070328_alalam-update.shtml
I guess we are heading towards war with full speed.See you on the other side:)

Anonymous said...

It has nothing to do with rhetoric Kevin. For the record, I live in the United States. The culture here is both very violent and anti-Muslim. Of course, at this point in time I doubt a military strike against Iran is going to be met with much public support, since we have already lost a war while destroying another culture and country. But there are those in power who wish to keep Iran in-check and/or destroy them to get to the resources they maintain.

And my source comes from a story about Russian intelligence releasing information pertaining to a possible US strike against Iran coming on April 6th.

Achtung Nada said...

well in clear you said that the Iranians deliberately provoked that incident ! I am sure you are right ! we pay the price for our policy against Iranian nuclear ambitions

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your post, interesting to read your view.

To the people who have commented:

Pessimism never got anyone anywhere

Anonymous said...

Vince, the United States and Britain are indeed the reason why Iran is as radical as it is currently. If you have no clue why the Iranian revolution happened in the first place, then you are obviously clueless on the subject. Any blood shed then, and now, is ultimately on OUR hands...

Anonymous said...

Does operation ajax ring a bell to you skippy?


And do you even know what "Jihad" means?


Why are neocons in America so uneducated on everything???

Anonymous said...

Ah yes, the neocon who "self-educates" himself with popular books written by other self-educated neocons. And here I was thinking you might actually have a REAL degree and expertise in something.

Guess I'm the only one with those credits in this argument.

Anonymous said...

This wasn't shown on the Persian media inside of Iran, Halm. Just on the Arabic channel, al-A'lam that broadcasts for the Arab neighbours.

Mr. Smarterthanyou said...

If you think the US is very violent, then you are a complete pansy who has intentionally insulated himself fromt he reality of the world.

The ME is a mess because of Islamic clerics and Islamic dictators, and because of Ignorant and violent Islamic masses. Look at the polls, about half of the muslims in the world are sociopathic (support bombing public places, support those who kill jew and christians for being jews and christians).

Iran decided to kidnap these people in order to cause confusion and delay. This was timed with the entry of the USS Stennis carrier battle group to the region. It doesn't matter if the brits were 1/4 mile into Iranian waters, or 2 miles in Iraqi waters. This was a pre-planned event. M.A. is counting on his liberal allies in the west to cause his move to be effective, because he knows they are cowards.

Mr. Smarterthanyou said...

Only enemies of the US, such as communists, Islamic fundimentalists, and homosexuals who want to destroy every trace of the Christianity that condems them, wish there was a military counterbalance to US power.

PS, only fags sigh.

Anonymous said...

It seems pretty likely that this was an orchestrated kidnapping. The Iranians initially provided incident coordinates that turned out to be in Iraqi waters, so then they came back with different coordinates that better suited their argument. The Indian ship that had been searched by the UK troops is still anchored in its initial position, and the UK sent someone there with GPS to verify its location - Iraqi waters again. Fishermen and the Indian captain all claim they were in Iraqi waters.

I think this will be a Public Relations disaster for Iran - especially after they exploited the hostages on TV, but I don't think it's the precursor to war that some folks are talking about.

Anonymous said...

danielspengies, by using Russian intelligence as your source you have just eliminated all credibility as a reliable poster. Russia is moving back to communism, they have killed several journalists in the last year, and Putin’s main goal right now is to make the USA look like a warmongering monster. All the while he continues to kill Muslims in Chechnya, and oh how soon the world has forgotten the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan.

ShareThis