Making People Disappear: Erasing Karroubi and Mousavi

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
- Milan Kundera in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Today, the Iranian regime has announced that the names of Mousavi and Karroubi can no longer be printed in Iranian newspapers. (Story in Persian via voteforian.com)

I can't help thinking of the dramatic scene in the Ten Commandments when Pharaoh says, "Let the name of Moses be stricken from every book and tablet." Or Milan Kundera's amazing short story The Lost Letters, that tells the story of the end of the Prague Spring by introducing us to Vladimir Clementis, who was erased from Soviet history after being charged with "conspiring with the enemy." He is the man with the camera in the photo on the left. The photo on the right shows the retouched version with Clementis erased and replaced with a wall. According to Kundera's story, that's his hat on the head of the man speaking at the microphone, Klement Gottwald:

Four years later, Clementis was charged with treason and hanged. The propaganda section immediately made him vanish from history and, of course, from all photographs. Ever since, Gottwald has been alone on the balcony. Where Clementis stood, there is only the bare palace wall. Nothing remains of Clementis but the fur hat on Gottwald's head.

We are now faced with a terrifying situation in Iran: the prospect of Stalinist purges coinciding with the rise of Iran's shadowy Qods Force (Jerusalem force) to positions of very public power.

I hope that I am wrong.

---

BTW, the images are from the amazing book by Alain Jaubert: Making People Disappear

Pioneering HIV/AIDS Doctors charged with fomenting revolution

Hamid Tehrani at Global Voices is asking why Iranian bloggers are not speaking out about the arrest of two prominent AIDS physicians:

As the XVIII International Aids Conference started on August 3 in Mexico, two internationally recognized Iranian HIV/AIDS specialists who were supposed to attend the meeting, are being held in prison accused of planning to overthrow the Iranian state.

The two physicians, Kamira and Arash Alaie, are brothers, and have pioneered educational and harm reduction campaigns among drug users, prostitutes, and prison inmates in Iran and throughout the Middle East. They were arrested last month, and have had no legal representation.

I don't know enough to comment. I remember that when I was in Iran it was very difficult to get information in the first place. I also know that despite the fact that Iran has an active AIDS prevention policy, many see the disease as a punishment for sinful behavior. Despite the fact that the society is extremely homosocial, Iranians are homophobic. I have to say, that I hope that it's simply a matter of not knowing rather than not caring.

Kamin Mohammadi has a post about the two doctors up at Arabisto.

Kamin writes:

I cannot imagine that my friend and his brother, who have devoted their lives to helping the people of our country, could pose any possible threat to it. I cannot speak for the Islamic Republic's motives nor can I pretend to have any intimate knowledge of the brothers' activities. But I think the sterling work of the Alaei brothers should be able to speak for itself.

Both she and Tehrani link to this online petition and you can join this campaign over at Facebook.

Wilders Mania

In defence of the right to offend (FT.com):

But his announcement in late November that he would make a short film to that effect sent the government into a panic. The cabinet met in secret. It ordered foreign embassies to draw up evacuation plans in case of mob violence. It put the mayors of Dutch cities on alert. It arranged meetings with imams and other Muslim representatives, distancing itself from Mr Wilders' positions. The interior, justice and foreign ministers summoned Mr Wilders to meetings, and the country's terrorism co-ordinator warned him that he might have to leave the country for his own security. The government reportedly investigated whether it would be possible to block or delay Mr Wilders's broadcast.

The FT writer Christopher Caldwell looks at the Wilders controversy over his platonic film about the the Koran. This is an interesting point of view that equates Wilders with Western liberalism and its drive to separate us from Biblical command. Not so sure I buy the argument... Do you?

Mr Wilders is something of a bogeyman in polite Dutch society now. He should not be. His perfectly legal effort resembles the kind of mischievous testing of boundaries that civil libertarians have engaged in whenever they have sought to hasten social change in the face of an indifferent or hostile electorate. In seeking to reopen such questions as, first, whether Islam is a religion, and, second, whether ancient scripture is sheltered from our laws regulating hate speech, Mr Wilders is the comrade-in-arms of those western legal activists who have agitated successfully for gay marriage, euthanasia and bans on religious display.

In the end, the best response to Wilders is the cold shoulder or humor.

If there is a violent response, doesn't that just make his point? It's like fuel for him and even for people who might not agree with him but who see his vindication in a violent response. Who am I to tell people what to do? But if you are a Muslim who is offended by Wilders, then the most effective protest you can offer is to ignore him completely .

I prefer Eutopia's response to the mania. It's generous and humorous.

read more | digg story

Oppression is weak

"In an open society it is impossible to kill, jail, or occupy everyone who disagrees with you." (Bill Clinton speaking at the World Affairs Council)

The regime in Iran is a house of cards. Many may talk about their strength. I’ve heard it: money is rolling in because of the high price of oil. Yes. That is a strength. The revolutionary military supports the current president. Many in the Arab world and beyond see Ahmadinejad as a damn against the tide of Western imperialism. Another strength. They are acting boldly. Another strength. The world is paying attention. Yep, yet another.

Why do I say they are weak? A government that stones a man for adultery, sentences a woman to lashings for promoting the rights of women, imprisons professors, blocks social networking sites, and locks up union leaders is weak. W-E-A-K. We know now how weak the revolution was when Iraq attacked in the early 80s thus uniting the population behind the regime. That revolution was so weak that it tortured, killed, and imprisoned nearly all of the political thinkers and activists in the entire country.

Weak regimes respond with violence. Weak regimes keep their populations in a state of fear.

Read about the weaknesses here:
Listen to Halleh Esfandiari
talking to NPR about her imprisonment

Kamangir writes about the sentencing of feminist Delaram Ali

Here is an account of the stoning of the man put together by Hamid Tehrani at Global Voices

Read a report from the OpenNet initiative on Iran

Stoning is Murder

Stoning is murder... plain and simple. The question this reporter asks is Who did it?

Click here for the full account at Women's Field. Here's an excerpt:

I start walking towards the foothills. It’s about a kilometer away. The ground is strewn with rocks and stones, and heaps of dirt that could be filled pits. I look around. Don’t see anything. I return to the village and walk around the streets. This time there are young people who answer my questions in more detail. Finally, one of them agrees to take me there. He goes directly to the spot where the filled pit is. Points it out. It’s obvious they’ve been here before. We go nearer.

Stones and rocks with dried up curdled blood lay around the heap. Some are splashed with blood. Some are so black and red with blood, you know right away what they were used for. Stunned, I ask, “You mean they threw these stones? These are way too big”. He shrugs his shoulders.

It’s difficult to survey this site but I manage to shoot a few picture and bit of footage. It’s not so much that the stones might’ve been bigger than prescribed. It’s that the large size of the stones they used means the executioners were not much concerned with following the letter of the law for a proper stoning. They just wanted to go though with it.

I ask: who was trowing the stones? Did you see them?

- No. But I don’t think it was the police themselves. They were milling about away from the spot. If they were throwing it, you’d see.

- Then who was it?

- Don’t know.

Stop Stoning Now (again)

I hope that we have witnessed the last stoning in Iran. It's time for a reinterpretation of Sharia law. I'm no expert, but I know that Iranians are quite capable of reinterpreting the law and banning stoning altogether with a bit of will. Until then I believe that any little problems that the government may have such as the release of the movie 300 or Persepolis or the knighting of Salman Rushdie look unbelievably petty.

Here's what Kamin Mohammadi writes:

(From: Iranian Stoning Case - the Act of a Civilized Nation?)

In May, the Iranian regime summoned the French ambassador in Tehran. The reason? Marjane Satrapi’s animated movie of her best-selling books Persepolis was set to premier at the Cannes Film Festival...

If the Iranian regime is concerned with these ‘unfair’ depictions of Iran and its people, it should perhaps look a little closer to home. What ‘civilized’ country in the 21st century stones its people to death? Iran, unfortunately, despite its 2,500-year old history, despite being the longest continuously inhabited land by a single people in the world, despite the pre and post-Islamic splendours of its architecture and arts, still puts people – mostly women – to death by stoning, for ‘crimes’ such as adultery. Under Iran’s Sharia law, being raped can count as adultery for a woman.

Enough with the sailors

…Although, hmm…six figures for the story of a 15-day detention in Iran? Help! I’ve been held hostage for almost four years. Is there an agent out there willing to save me?

Happy Passover, Easter, and the Prophet of Islam's Birthday

Ahmadinejad covered them all when he signed the papers announcing the release of the 15 British sailors.

It was their clothes that were so interesting to me and Keivan: the woman, Faye Turney wearing a giant striped shirt with baggy pants and an over-sized blue shirt; the men in their standard-issue Hacoupian suits. It's hard to imagine the process of dressing the British sailors. They had quite the array of outfits: their uniforms, the gym suits we saw them in while they sat in a room close to the location of Ahmadinejad's press conference, then the suits and Faye's really unfashionable outfit (clearly, shopping for her clothes was not done by Iran's chic set).

Keivan has been speculating on how they were fitted for their outfits and who bought them. And the strangest part yet (at least for me) is the parting gifts. Who provides released foreign captives with parting gifts? They got pistachios too: not too shabby a parting gift at all!

Imagine, 5 years in Guantanamo and then you get a little party bag filled with Starbucks coupons and Gap t-shirts. "A mememto of your stay with us."

And of course the British sailors were under psychological pressure... that comes as no surprise. What I find the most unnerving is that our (American) behavior at Abu Gharib and Guantanamo has completely robbed me of the right to be indignant. If Americans don't agree with me, tell me why I am wrong.

Click on the New York Times multimedia link for a good slideshow of images

As usual, The Onion has the best take: Iran Releases British Sailors

Release Papers Signed

Fars News Agency is reporting that Ahmadinejad has signed the release papers for the 15 British soldiers.

You know what this means, don't you? It means that Keivan wins the pool for when the Brits would be released. He guessed sometime this week. I thought it would be 15 months from now.

Our commenter Hossein also gets to keep both of the s's in his name. (He offered to give one up if this whole thing lasted beyond Keivan's prediction.)

Aside: This is an interesting coincidence: Sharafi is back in Tehran.

15 sailors, 10,460 news items

Last night, while Al Alam and western news organizations were showing the latest confessions from the British soldiers, Iranians were watching Buster Keaton unfold a giant newspaper...


Why is Iran losing its case in international public opinion and why doesn’t the Iranian government care about this?

It is no secret that governments and corporations around the world spend millions, even billions, of $s to improve their public relations. When governments or corporations are under attack or when they see their policies or actions are not received well at the national or, as in this matter, international level, they try to present their side of the story in a compelling and coherent manner. They also seek help or guidance from the partners that they count on to come to their side in times of need. Looking at events surrounding the capture of 15 British sailors in the past 10 days proves that Iran does not care about its public image and does not know how to gain the support of the international community. Iran is speaking with too many voices and has too many different agendas. Iran will come out of this crisis the big loser.

Just a few months ago it seems that the people in the Arab world were supportive of Iran’s policies such as in the case of so-called peaceful nuclear energy and standing up to the west. Now it seems that they are increasingly nervous that Iran might provoke another war. Some guy on the BBC said about this that Iran scored an own goal. (sorry, can’t remember his name)

What Iran needs at this time is a brand new political calculation machine that can better analyze situations both tactically and strategically. If anyone knows of such a machine, there’s a market in Iran.

Why am I saying this? This morning when I got up, I went through all of the comments people left on this blog since the 15 British sailors ware captured on March 23. There is a storm of news articles and opinions about it around the world. I can see very clearly that Iranians writing inside and outside Iran take a similar approach: were the 15 sailors in Iranian waters or not, and if they were, was that right or wrong? I think this shows how black and white we Iranians tend to see international events. I bet there are incidents of foreign ships entering a nation’s territorial waters all the time: these breaches do not become international incidents because they are rationally dealt with and solved. Usually, as I wrote earlier, with a megaphone.

Here I want to give you guys a few statistics regarding a couple of issues Iran is dealing with or needs to deal with. I am hoping to prove to you that whatever Iranians had planned or not planned that the result of their actions is more damaging than the UN resolution against the country. You might say that Iran was good at taking the attention away from the UN resolution, but may have brought extra and more damaging sanctions upon itself through its actions.

Here we go:
If you search for 15 British sailors on Google News, you get 10,460 news items/articles.


Search for subject United Nations Resolution 1747 will deliver 208 hits.

Combination of United Nations Resolution 1747 + 15 British sailors will ONLY deliver 37 hits.

US + 15 British sailors delivered 7,366 hits. In the same time deployment of 21,000 new soldiers in Iraq add only 90 hits

We Iranians should look at what people are saying about us: they say that we have a tradition of taking hostages: there were the Americans taken hostage in their embassy at the start of the resolution, the British sailors that we took a few years ago, and that in the 1800s we killed the Russian ambassador when we attacked his embassy.

This is another disaster for us. It will take years for us to recover from it. It isn’t only the Iranian government that will suffer, it is the Iranian people as well. We need to stop being such losers and so short-sighted. Iranians need to see that we are losing big time in international public opinion. Our image is as important to defend as our territorial borders. Right now the world sees us as out of control. That is a very dangerous image to present to the world.

For the record, these televised confessions that the Iranian government keeps showing on its Arabic channel Al Alam are a big joke and they only serve to make us look stupid. I, like other Iranians, know of many people who were forced into making confessions for television.

People may form an opinion of us in ten minutes that it will take us decades to undo.

Not quite an update... more on the fifteen

Keivan woke up this morning and heard Ahmadinejad saying that the British had to apologize. "The negotiations are over now. Now we have a problem," he said. What he meant was that now an official voice had spoken and Iran's position was getting more firm.

Angus McDowall has a good article about this very issue:

Last night's dramatic footage demonstrates how extremists with a grudge against the West and a burning sense of ambition can force Iran into sudden confrontations that its smoothest-talking diplomats can have trouble defusing. The revolutionary guardsmen and their radical supporters behind this crisis only represent a single faction. But they have been able to take Iran's foreign policy hostage and provoke an international incident.

Taking advantage of the deep fractures in the Iranian state, the revolutionary guards have created a fait accompli, forcing the government to adopt a position from which it will be hard to back down. Driven by their experiences of the revolution and eight bloody years of war with Iraq, many guardsmen want to see Iran take a more aggressive stance against Britain and America. The confusion is caused by Iran's unusual political system, which combines democratic elements such as an elected president and parliament with the theocratic rule of a supreme leader. In practice, this means decisions are rarely made by a single person: they are disputed and fought over by a host of political factions and vested interests, including religious leaders, elected politicians, wealthy merchants -- and soldiers.

I also agree with parts of what The Moor Next Door says about Iran's capture of the 15 British sailors:

This move lacked tact and subtlety. This kind of bold behavior irritates enemies and solidifies their alliances. This sort of action simply validates American perceptions of Iranian behavior (which are often incorrect, and even dangerous, in their judgements, because they are usually hysterical and spasmodic), and serves to potentially transfer those across the Atlantic.

(Found via Global Voices)

Last night, we decided to start a pool (I know, it's crass...) for when the sailors will be released. My guess is 15 months (everyone thinks I am nuts. I hope they are right), Keivan and another friend think sometime next week after Sizdeh Bedar (the 13th day after the New Year and the last day of the New Year's holidays). No one else was brazen enough to hazard a guess.

Negotiating,,, Redux

Iranian rebuttal shown via BBC World

Any diplomat who has ever worked in Iran can tell you that negotiations rarely go your way once the issues become public.

The problem is that in a case like this one: where 15 British sailors were nabbed while boating in troubled waters, in front of 2 journalists, which pretty much meant that there was no way of keeping the event quiet. This also meant that there was no way to have a kind of low-key negotiation behind-the-scenes.


It is only normal that the British public would demand a show of strength from its government. Unfortunately, it is likely that this show is also jeopardizing the negotiations. As Keivan and I have learned in much, much lower stakes negotiating, any show of desperation or demand is met by stonewalling and backtracking. Many Iranians seem to have no concept of win-win negotiating, which makes them dangerous.

“If I am not screwing you, you must be screwing me,” is how many Iranians seem to think of the negotiating process.

I am sure that the British politicians and diplomats understand all this, but now they are stuck with a public “ratcheting up” that just may end up meaning a few months of detention for the British sailors. Hope I am wrong.

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.

300 Spartans + 15 sailors

Last Friday’s capture of 15 British sailors in Shatt al-Arab waterway dividing Iranian and Iraqi territory ruined my attack plan against the new movie 300. Last week we had a problem with 300 Spartans, this week we have the additional problem of 15 British sailors and new UN sanctions. We are not afraid problems. We are a nation of problem-solvers. Hey you guys out there: any problems you can’t handle? Hand them to us…


Tony Blair said, "We have certainly sent the message back to them very clearly indeed. They should not be under any doubt at all about how seriously we regard this act, which is unjustified and wrong." (http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=465272007)

Yes I do believe it was a big mistake from Iran’s part and I am willing to say this incident may be even worse for Iran than the UN Security Council resolution 1747. Why do I think that? I will get back to that in other positing. But let me now get even with the movie 300. I do recommend that you see this film. The best way is if you and 100 other friends buy one DVD together, Otherwise you would be paying too much.

We saw the movie last week, when all was well in Iran and people were getting ready for a lovely new year. A friend invited us to his house to see it. Unlike other times when we were invited, there were no drinks on the table waiting for us. That night we were dealing with very important issues. 300 against 70 million. I cannot complain about the film from an artistic point of view: it seemed like it was beautiful in a fascist sort of way. Since I am not a woman, I cannot complain that there was only one woman in the movie who spent most of her time in bed. And I don’t think my black friends should complain either since they such huge roles in the movie. How that happened, I don’t know.

There were 7 people in the room, behalf of me and Esther. They were all these big guys from foreign newspapers, a few Iranians and our superstar foreign correspondent visiting from a Northern European country who I almost kicked out of the window because he was talking about himself too much. His comments about everything were getting to me. He was like one of those people who thinks he is an expert in the politics of every country that he visits even if he has only visited once and for no more than a week. His first comment to us was, “I hate Americans.” I said, “Then you are in the wrong place because Iranians love Americans.” Then he said, “Some of my best friends are Americans.” (Doesn’t that kind of line make you sick to your stomach? Just like when people say Iranians are terrorists but my neighbor is Iranian and I like him.)

First let me be honest with you, what I feel here is what I am almost 100 % sure you would be feeling if someone made you and your country look like monsters. This is not just about Iran; this insult can be made about any other country, because you don’t have to be right or historically correct. You can always make up stories about any nation and I am sure you can find research to prove what you want to say. From the other side what Azadeh Moaveni wrote:” It is going to take an act of foolhardy courage to distribute that film in Iran. It will truly be 70 million against 300” is ridiculous because yesterday I saw at least 4 places selling the movie 300. They were openly yelling out “300, 300, 300…” It was no secret.

Selling 300 on the streets of Tehran:


and here too:


Iranian newspapers are saying that the making of this film distorts historical facts and makes Iranians look like monsters. Many other Iranians believe that it was made in order to prepare the American public to start war against Iran. One of my friends asked Esther if it was true that America always made a movie like this before going to war. “Wasn’t there a movie like this about Saddam Hussein?” He asked her.

This is part of big conspiracy that the US government is responsible for everything and that US has plans for everything, any time and everywhere. This may be true if you think Americans have super powers and that they are so good at planning. Anyone who has ever visited the US should know that it is not true that everything is so well-planned. This is just part of line which people use to blame everything on others. I wonder why we Iranian buy into this kind of BS all the time?

You can only ask others to be fair if you are fair. Iranians may be upset about this movie, which makes us look very bad, but everyday some of us get up and go to the street to shout down with America. We need to tell our own stories. We need to look at our own propaganda and be more critical of it. Hundreds of people here ask me all sorts of crap about western families: do sons and daughters sleep together? Do they care more about dogs than their own children? Where do they get those ideas? From our own distortions.

I’ll leave you by saying that everyone in the group watching the movie (even the American and the Brit who wants to be known as Scottish, not British) thought it was racist, ridiculous, and dangerous. They all knew it was a fantasy. Esther could not figure out who we were supposed to have sympathy for. “Ahoo!”

In Iranian waters or not in Iranian waters?

A commentor on my last post wrote:

"and you don't have the slightest doubt that they were not within Iranian Waters..."

Let me agree with the commenter for a second that the British sailors were in Iran's water, if that is the case everybody knows that this is against international law. Iran should have the right to protest that move.

I also strongly believe, particularly in this case, that the best way to act is not to choose to use the very last option you have. It is no secret to anybody that we are living in a very tense situation. At the moment that I am writing this, the UN Security Council is probably passing another damaging series of economic sanctions against Iran. This is a time that Iranians should put their nationalistic feelings aside and not just go after what is right at the moment, but to act in a way that ensures that we prevent a new disaster in Middle East.

So dear Commenter, since we both know that every coin has two sides, what about if the British sailors were not in Iranian waters? Is right to hold them? Will Iran benefit from this action? If Iran is wrong in this case, it will only add to the feeling of people around the world that the Iranian government is out of control. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out.

I do believe that Iran is looking for ways to show that they are not joking when they say they will retaliate if they come under attack. This may mean that the Iranian government believes that the US and its allies will attack Iran..

(BTW, ET adds that there is a pretty comprehensive roundup at Slate and at Jules Crittenden

Why oh why were British soldiers taken prisoner?

This morning when I woke up, I immediately turned on the TV to watch the latest BBC world news report on the British naval personnel who were captured yesterday morning, but I ended up watching a totally different program first, Francesco da Mosto’s travel journey to explore the history, culture, and modern-day life of Italy. He sets off heading south to Sicily. Francesco da Mosto’s journey is my favorite travel show. He finished this program by saying "Our country is not to be explained, but to be experienced and felt. I really think you can say that about Iran too.

But experiencing it lately means feeling a lot of pain.

Have you ever had a time when nothing is going well for you? Yesterday’s capture of the British Navy personnel by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Naval Corps is just another bad thing at a time when most Iranians feel nothing is going well for them. Considering Iran’s situation, one would think that we would do everything to improve its position in the world, and would do everything possible to make sure that the UN Security Council would not pass another damaging series of economic sanctions against it. But that is when you are rational and you are not looking for crises.

I still don’t understand what happened yesterday. But since yesterday I have been trying to figure out why Iran captured British Navy personnel at the moment when every eye in the world is upon us.

A couple of things came to my mind:

Iran is desperate to show the world and the west in particular that we are able to protect and control Iran’s territorial waters. Why we want to do this by capturing 15 British sailors is not clear to me just yet. The idea may be to have something to exchange for the 5 Iranians who were arrested last January in northern Iraq. This is also a bit strange since the 5 Iranians are held by American forces, not by British forces. It is not even clear those 5 want to come back to Iran.

Another idea is that perhaps Iran wants even more attention. Here are a few more notions that I have been considering:

1) We Iranians cannot read maps very well and got confused about where our territorial waters are.

2) Iran's Revolutionary Guard navy corps did not have anything to do on a boring Friday morning.

3) Iranians like to deal with multiple problems at the same time: a new UN resolution is just not enough for us to deal with when we can handle so many more crises at the same time.

4) The new Iranian Navy exercise in the waters off Bushehr province went berserk.

5) We know Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary will say "We have asked for a full explanation on what has happened and we are leaving them in no doubt that we want the immediate and safe return of our personnel and their equipment."

6) Our president needed a reason for not traveling to the US to give a speech at the UN.

What do you guys think?

It's all the fault of the British...

Of course, only people who have lived in Iran or have read the book My Uncle Napolean realize that what I wrote is a joke.

Today Iran grabbed 15 British soldiers. We found out when we returned from seeing the movie Ekhragieh, which was about 6 misfits who join the Iranian military during the war with Iraq (their war, not ours). Turned on BBC and heard Frances Harrison speculate that Iran may have taken the soldiers in order to negotiate the release of their own captured "diplomats" in Iraq.

It's not the first time that Iran has detained British soldiers, but it is a particularly precarious moment to do so when any provocation could go further than Iran or the West would want.

This was exactly our fear when we heard rumors of Iranian sailors leaving grafitti on American tankers or we imagined nervous, young soldiers getting itchy fingers as they were forced to keep still while smugglers zipped in and out of Persian Gulf waters.

So far baztab.ir is reporting what the BBC reported, which is that the British sailors were brought into Iranian waters by Iranian warships.

Shit.