THE PLANK MAY 11, 2009
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Joe Klein sees the strange episode as I do, a sign of dueling among Iranian government factions, and possibly indicating a conciliatory tilt towards the US:
Today, the American journalist Roxana Saberi was released from
prison, which is excellent news but doesn't diminish the outrageousness
of her incarceration in the first place. This much seems clear: Some
faction in the Iranian government wanted her in jail on trumped up
charges--a message of intransigence. And some other Iranian faction
wanted her released--a message, potentially, that Iran is ready to
begin negotiations with the U.S.
--Michael Crowley
4 comments
Unrelated, but what do you make of this story?
news.yahoo.com/.../us_us_afghanistan
- jyunis
May 11, 2009 at 1:49pm
Alternately, one could see it as part of a pattern in which whenever the United States starts trying to engage Iran in ways that touch on what Iran sees as its core security and regime-survival issues -- such as the nuclear program -- Tehran does other, lesser mischief of the sort that will either derail our engagement or force us to negotiate about that first. Pyongyang displays a similar pattern, as does Damascus, though in the latter case Syria usually bumbles the effort. Well, so does North Korea, actually, but more often due to technical failures like their ICBM not working, whereas Syria's failures to seize initiative are more buffoonish in conception as well as execution. Anyway, the point is that this is how certain bad actors behave, and they do so in part because we've made withholding our relationship with them such a big deal that they see any engagement at all as some kind of big-deal grand-bargain-negotiation-session. Countries in which we have fully functioning, permanent embassies tend not to behave thusly, in part because they understand that normal relations, even among non-friends, aren't a bargaining session.
Until we can wean Tehran of the illusion that it can seize the initiative in our relationship by going out and giving us something to negotiate about every time we talk about talking to them, we can expect more of this sort of low-level provocation.
- rhubarbs
May 11, 2009 at 2:03pm
...then there's always the high-level sort of provocation, like murdering people by the hundreds in bombings, strong-arming the entire state of Lebanon by loading Hezbollah up with new and improved weapons in blatant defiance of international agreements, and etc.
We may have something to talk about if we could find a way to switch off refined petroleum products, but at this point they seem to think they're winning, and that time is on their side. What's to talk about?
- Robert Powell
May 11, 2009 at 2:54pm
Tep thinks that this is a sign of H's weakness and it just shows that the Mullahs can walk all over him whenever they want, especially since he didn't unleash ICBM's to obliterate Bushehr in response to Roxana Saberi's imprisonment. Of course, so is everything else the Iranians do, so I guess this is not so unusual.
- wildboy
May 11, 2009 at 3:02pm