I think Iran is quite a bit weaker than we give credit for and giving up a delicious chance to punish the infidel is some proof of that.

Perhaps an economic blockade is more of a threat than Khamenei wants to let on. Or just a drop in oil price might have more effect than the west wants to believe.
My personal opinion is we shouldn’t be so afraid to act.

“February 03, 2007
Thomas Friedman: Iran’s Great Weakness May Be Its Oil

The San Diego Union-Tribune has Thomas Friedman’s latest column from Times Select:

Iran’s great weakness may be its oil, by Thomas Friedman, Commentary,Union-Tribune: There may be only one thing dumber than getting addicted to consuming oil as a country – and that is getting addicted to selling it. … Economists have long studied this phenomenon, but I got focused on it here in Moscow after chatting with Vladimir Mau, the president of Russia’s Academy of National Economy.” …
“The parallel with Iran, Mau said, is that the shah used Iran’s oil windfall after 1973 to push major modernization onto a still traditional Iranian society. The social backlash produced the ayatollahs of 1979. The ayatollahs used Iran’s oil windfall to lock themselves into power.

In 2005, … Iran’s government earned $44.6 billion from oil and spent $25 billion on subsidies – for housing, jobs, food and 34-cents-a-gallon gasoline – to buy off interest groups. Iran’s current populist president has further increased the goods and services being subsidized. ”

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/02/thomas_friedman.html

Iran of course wants to win the propaganda war, the Persian Chiefs can can achieve a lot of play out of punishing the west by parading hostages as they were only starting to do.

It’s just too strange that a golden opportunity to exact just that kind of punishment was cut short.

Iran is our sworn enemy, they gave up the chance to gig us for a good long time?

Please don’t get me wrong, Speakup, I WANT to believe that that’s what’s been going on, but it’s not going to do us any good in the propaganda war for public perception if it remains idle speculation.

That is one of our gravest mistakes in this war. Not only are we not winning the single most important part of all, the propaganda war, we haven’t even started FIGHTING it yet.

It’s just too strange that a golden opportunity to exact just that kind of punishment was cut short.

Iran is our sworn enemy, they gave up the chance to gig us for a good long time?

Even our whimpy leaders can use the phone when they have to, somebody got through and we should follow up.

Even if you were right, and 5 years of “fighting” a war on the cheap while sucking up to every terrorist twat don’t exactly make me over-eager to believe that, it doesn’t matter as long as nobody knows.

Propaganda wars are all about perception, it’s all about what the public thinks. It matters not one tiny little emasculated bit what might have “gone on behind closed doors” if nobody says so. If, and that’s a bit IF, our so-called “leaders” actually managed to grab Ahmadinnerjacket by the balls, then they need to shout it from the rooftops or it won’t matter jack sh*t.

THAT’s how propaganda works.

It’s rather Carter Esque…

Ladies and gentlemen, our course is clear. The time has come to knuckle under. To get down on all fours and really lick boot.

Otherwise, from a propaganda standpoint, your theory is completely useless.

Then explain why British sailors are home instead of being used as a continuing taunt.

Iranians in charge love nothing more than to prolong every possible misery they can to show the wests impotence.

Twelve days is nothing compared to the 444 tense knife twisting days previously.

Even our whimpy leaders can use the phone when they have to, somebody got through and we should follow up.

…whose premise was we had better stop talking bad about this or they will never help us again…

Seems like they need us more than we need them!

I think the west, while assigning humiliation to ourselves we’ve missed that Iran did not draw out this hostage crisis for another 432 infidel torturing-Jihadi ingratiating days.

They could have, why not?

Because the point was already made? Because he’d just demonstrated that he could get away with piracy and not a one of the vaunted Great or Lesser Satans were going to do a thing about it?

For your fantasy about sudden secret double probation scary “pressure” to have any meaning at all, everybody would have had to know that it was the case.

Otherwise, from a propaganda standpoint, your theory is completely useless. Propaganda wars aren’t won by “what might have gone on behind closed doors”, they’re won in the public eye.

So if Limpy McBlair and Wimpy McBush had really pulled off some super scary stunt, they’d better speak up about it.

But hey, any sort of balm to smear on that deep, bleeding wound that is the complete humiliation we suffered, right?

They could have, why not?

I think a phone call on the red line (from?)was the impetus that put the Brits on the plane home.
Whether it was as simple as Khamenei calling Ahmednejad or someone outside like Putin, Blair or Bush, the call got through and an opportunity for ‘students’ to storm an Embassy or detention center didn’t happen.

The message we should therefore pickup on I think is that the Persians can be ‘had’, they are vulnerable and the west should apply every possible kind of pressure towards regime change.

If the Brits don’t operate a kickass Navy anymore that’s their problem.
They got the wussie points they well deserved.

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/

As many of you may recall, Richard did fantastic work ferreting out the corruption of the media in the Qana incident during the recent Lebanon war.

TheBigOldDog on April 8, 2007 at 4:05 PM

That was very interesting. Thanks for posting that. I have gotten into at least two confrontations with Brits in the last few days whose premise was we had better stop talking bad about this or they will never help us again. It’s good to know that not all Brits feel that way.

For some interesting reading on what the Brits think, check out our friends at:

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/

As many of you may recall, Richard did fantastic work ferreting out the corruption of the media in the Qana incident during the recent Lebanon war.

This sorry bunch should be ashamed to walk in public.

I’m still persuadable that the Royal Navy is more to blame for the hostages’ behavior than the hostages themselves

so am I Bryan.

and at the same time the BBC cancels a planned program about a Victoria Cross winner because it “mights offend some people opposed to the war”.

Does anyone really wonder why we are loosing the propoganda war???