Baghdad Report: Creating Old “Enemies” for New Wars
Farzad Bazoft, Journalist, Hung 1990
Think the current Iranian crisis has to do with the 1979 American Embassy take-over? Think again.
In 1990 Saddam Hussein, to mollify the Iraqi people arrested, tried and hung Farzad Bazoft, an innocent reporter for The Observer. It was what dictators do when war looms. PJM Baghdad editor Omar Fadhil looks at that incident and sees how the capture of the British sailors may just be the mullahs stealing from Hussein's playbook.
By Omar Fadhil, PJM Baghdad
Since the seizure of the British sailors and marines took place in Iraqi waters, making it an act of aggression against our allies in our territory, we’ve been following the crisis trying to predict out how this standoff’s going to unfold. Understanding the motives and goals of Iranian government is useful in predicting the way the crisis will end.
Some pundits are comparing the situation with the US embassy crisis in Tehran back in 1979. I don’t find this comparison valid. The abduction of the sailors has more in common with the Bazoft case in Iraq in 1990.
Taking over the American embassy happened during the days of the Islamic revolution that toppled the Shah. The Shah was considered the American-backed puppet by the revolutionaries, and the American embassy was seen as the place from which the imperialist west pulled the strings of the Shah; the tyrant who oppressed the Islamists.
The 1979 embassy attack was meant to send a message to the west from the leaders of the revolution: ‘You Americans can’t control us anymore. We are independent of your manipulation and your presence is not welcome. We will run this country and spread our Islamic revolution as we please’
The regime in Iran has been defiant to the demands of the international community for years now. Nejad and the Mullahs have chosen to set Iran on collision course with the world. What they need today is to convince public opinion in Iran that the west wouldn’t dare attack the Islamic republic. At the same time they need to make the acts of the regime look like acts of defense in response to foreign trespassing-just like Saddam in 1990.
Saddam knew that a confrontation was imminent, but he wanted to tell the people here that he was strong enough and had enough deterrence to make the west think a thousand times before firing a single bullet at him.
The possibility of war creates fear and dismay which might turn into anger and unrest. That’s the last thing tyrants want to happen in their countries.
So in 1990 Saddam found what he was looking for. A showcase he could use to tell the people inside Iraq they were safe under his firm control. He “captured” Farzad Bazoft, declared him a western “Spy”, put him to “trial”, and hung him. At the time he could point to the “facts” and say that all the west could do was object and condemn. So far the parallels with the captured British sailors have held, and threats of a trial and “punishment” are par for the course. Of course at the end there was war for Saddam, but he managed to keep most Iraqis living in illusion until the war actually started.
I’m inclined to believe that the Mullahs are pursuing a similar maneuver here. The Iranian regime wants to tell the Iranian people that ‘See, we arrested their sailors and there’s nothing they can do about it. The west is too scared to attack Iran and that’s why all they can do is to negotiate the problem.’
Still, while the goals are similar, the endings might differ and I hope they do differ.
I hope the sailors will be released unharmed eventually because the mullahs know that executing them would only accelerate the onset of war. Right now what they want more than anything is to buy as much time as possible so that they can continue their policy with as little opposition from inside Iran as possible.
Dear Omar
This an excellent analysis.
We know the Iranians have run out of ways to continue their brinkmanship with the free world.
This abduction of the Sailors is yet another means to concentrate and divert world attention away from what they are doing with the uranium enrichment programme. But the free world is not composed of idiots and morons as they would like to think it is.
This is yet another nail in the coffin of this dictatorship and republic of fear.
We pray that very soon it would be carried away to be burried.
Kind regards
an insight that could only come from someone actually there and much appreciated. I thought it was just a local leader getting stuck like KAL007 shootdown. but it seems that its more like an idiot getting caught looking stupid so he decides to toy with his detractors by dragging his feet or doing something controlling because thats all he has.
the problem is that the west is so stuck on just making money and appeasing this crap that it will work. the UK navy will end up looking like keystone kops, the mullahs will keep the UN off their backs for another week and Nancy Pelosi will get another white leather photo-op.
what about freedom for the iranian people? what about safety from nuclear mullahs?
who cares anymore?!!!
trivialized by liberals, reduced to boys posturing by the feminists, its all just talk unless there’s YOUR grandparents being stuffed into traincars no one will bat an eye.
I think you nailed it. People look at things from their own frame of reference. It is impossible, without extensive knowledge to walk a mile in another man’s shoes. Western newspeople are usually as dumb as a sack of hammers. Thanks for your informed analysis.
Intriguing. I think it’s easy to forget, from afar, that the mullahs’ dialogue is not always with the West, but also with their own people. I do hope your opinion about the number and influence of idiots and morons is also on target.
“the problem is that the west is so stuck on just making money and appeasing this crap that it will work.”
Iran judged everyone’s reaction well.
Game, set, match. GWOT is over.
Iran showed everyone who the regional powerhouse really is, and how lame and self loathing and pathetic the west is.
Cost of appeasement? Human beings.
The bully expects to find their victim waiting on the playground with their lunch money.
And then, the bully grows up and wants much more than “lunch money”.
Telling the bully no the first time and if need be, punching him in the nose, allows you to eat lunch, in peace.
You know that Omar and so do many of us out here.
It ain’t pretty, it ain’t nice. But, neither is the bully.
A well reasoned analysis and explanation. To us in the west this seems so ridiculous it is almost theater.
But there is a strange odor about this affair that defies prediction. The Iranians do not want to release the hostages until they have tormented the British for as long and as successfully as they can. That seems to me to be the pivotal factor in the Iranian calculation. And they can easily make a misstep or an external event throws the process into chaos.
In all events there are little idiosyncrasies that seem unimportant at the beginning but as time moves on they become crucial. Time is the amplifier here and the longer this drags on the greater the possibility for a serious consequence to the eventual outcome.
Excellent analysis as usual Omar
Things are alot different now than in 1990. I’m sure there is much more access to the outside world through the internet in Iran. I suspect the impact will not be what the mullahs hope for.
Great analogy Christine!
One small but extremely important thing…Ahamdinejad’s name cannot be called Nejad. That’s like someone’s name being Goodman and calling him Man!
One other thing…capturing the Brit sailors isn’t only for buying time for little opposition…that’s an absurd conclusion. The reason WHY they did it, was:
A. Notice they did it the day before the Security Council’s vote at the U.N., last Saturday; it was meant to be a display of force, to intimidate members nations into not voting the wrong way…against them. It was a form of ransom demand.
B. It is to create a red herring in order to get the world to focus on something else while they scramble for the furtherance of their nuclear development.
Iran is just going to keep pushing,and pushing and pushing all the while thinking the west is just going to sit by because the west doesn’t want any more “war”…thats true to a point,BUT,the wests patience is about worn thin….IF the “HOSTAGES” are not released within the next month I think you will see what the”REGIME” thinks won’t happen….ALL OUT ATTACK!!!!
I believe this “REGIME” will be put to rest sooner than later,its they’re call….God help the population of Iran…Revolt and Take them out before the “WEST” does!
From a Texan:
Pictures are hung; horses are hung; juries are hung. But men are “hanged”. When a man is executed by hanging, the proper way to say it, past tense, is that “he was hanged”, NOT, “he was hung”.
if i’ve said it once i’ve said it a hundred times–we need to change the scope of this war from bottom up to top down. either we are in a war on terror and the states that sponsor it or we are not. we know who the terrorists are and we know what states sponsor it. that said why are the top 100 hundred leaders of iran, syria, hamas, hezzbollah, sudan etc still alive? forget attacking whole countries, start with the leadership. think cruise missiles without warning, all on the same nite.
personally i hope the iranians take over the british embassy and parade the staff nude through the streets–something, anything to convince the majority of the few remaining sane people on this planet that these repugnant terror leaders are monsters and need to be euthanized before they kill millions. clearly 300,000 dead in darfur is not enough nor is repeated talk of genocide, with beheadings etc as party favors. meanwhile pelosi goes for a photo op with the thug assad-the assassin. the rest of this low life terror scum parties in new york every time they use the UN for an excuse to go on a shopping spree. i think we have all gone collectively f’king mad to put up with this sh*t.
all this without the bomb. think how entertaining iran and its minions will be when they have the A-bomb.
About the coordinates… according to Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, “…on British nautical maps, 29 degrees 50.36 minutes North 048 degrees 43.08 minutes East is 100 yards above the low water line.” Legally this puts the supposed position of the capture on dry ground. But, as he points out, that is a red herring. There is no established boundry worked out between Iraq and Iran in those waters. Claims and counter claims by both Iran and Britain are hotheaded spouting of non-facts for the public’s consumption.
Omar confidently stating the seizure was in Iraqi waters, and an act of aggression, is weak at best. Of course, everything he continues to say rests on equally weak footing, including the hyperbolic, not so clever comparison to the hanging of an apparently innocent journalist in a completely different country, by a completely unrelated regime, by a completely unrelated tyrant, and under completely different circumstances. Yeah, that’s helpful.
Could the capture have anything to do with the 300 or so Iranians the US is holding, some having been invited by the Iraqi government into Iraq in the first place? Tit for tat? Less provocative than taking Americans. God knows what someone with an itchy, possibly palsied, trigger finger might do.
God, the theories fevered neocons come up with….
Terry Jones has got it right: “I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this – allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world – have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God’s sake, what’s wrong with putting a bag over her head? That’s what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it’s hard to breathe.”
I disagree a little with Omar’s analysis. I happen to think that the British marines were let loose in the disputed areas of “Arvand Rood” in order to test the Iranian reactions. The Iranian regime is not a contiguous regime i.e any decision can be overpowered by the “Pasdaran” within the hierarchy of this system. Whilst the different factions within the Islamic regime fight over supremecy or the leadership of the Islamic State, they do have some compromising points to reach as and when the integrity of the system falls under threat. The “Pasdaran” did this as a show of strength against the other factions within the regime, taking the British by surprise over their “testing the water”! The Brits did not expect this but they had to find there own answers while the US is putting on a tremendous show of power in the Persian Gulf. Farzad Bazoft was just an innocent reporter and had no military connections whatsoever, and I think that Omar’s comparison is totally out of context with due respect!
That should be “hanged”, not “hung”.
Omar, This is as usual a great analysis. Stay safe
Now that the Brit soldiers are going to be released, I am betting the Iranians will say that peaceful negotiations work. They will make a big showcase of how diplomacy works. Expect the media to fall all over this and completely ignore everything else Iran is doing that leads to building a nuke. In the end this just buys Iran time, and delays any military action. Brilliant on their part.
Of course, everything he continues to say rests on equally weak footing, including the hyperbolic, not so clever comparison to the hanging of an apparently innocent journalist in a completely different country, by a completely unrelated regime, by a completely unrelated tyrant, and under completely different circumstances. Yeah, that’s helpful.
By your comment, I would gather that you are suggesting that world events happen in a vacuum and that each event is new, unique and disconnected from every other in the context of human behavior and history. In short, there is no basis useful basis for historical or intellegence analysis.
Now that’s real helpful…
Apparently Nancy Pelhosi is planning to announce that her negotiations with Bashar Assad helped to release the 15 hostages.
“I would gather that you are suggesting that world events happen in a vacuum and that each event is new, unique and disconnected from every other in the context of human behavior and history…”
No, Mack. That is what you are saying I am saying. I am saying Omar made no case whatsoever that the hanging of a journalist in Iraq had anything to do with the marines captured, and now released, un-hung, by Iran. These two events are unrelated, and Omar said nothing to make any sort of legitimate, or even rational, connection between the two. The ONLY thing connecting the two events in Omar’s piece is his hatred for Iran, and that, quite frankly, is completely irrelevent.
sdemetri,
Are you an english or history prof? Or maybe an analyst? Perhaps Omar does miss a step in laying out his rationale. Take a step back. Omar is not trying to say there is a direct, causal relationship between the Bazoft hanging and the capture of the British sailors. He’s saying that the motivation and desired outcomes are similar. That’s it.
lcg, trying to demonize Iran through whatever fiction possible, making implausible connections where none logically exist, all for the sake of fomenting hatred against a country we would be arguably much, much better off talking to, than bombing, Omar did no one a service by this idle, baseless speculation. I just don’t see that the motivation and desired outcomes are at all similar. There was little to indicate the marines were ever in any danger of being hanged, except for someone baselessly saying it is so. And his charge that that is what dictators do when war looms is entirely baseless as well. The regime of Saddam Hussein really didn’t resemble the government in Iran. Making the “dictator” connection is weak… two very different government and power structures.
Actually, it was good cop – bad cop (UK / US) that got them released. As to the wider issues, Iran has forfeited all possible claims to be a genuine state, much less a responsible one. See http://regimechangeiniran.com/, amongst others.