The war of humiliation
By Robert Fisk
04/02/07 "The
Independent" -- -- Our Marines are hostages. Two
more were shown on Iranian TV. Petrol bombs burst behind the
walls of the British embassy in Tehran. But it's definitely not
the war on terror. It's the war of humiliation. The humiliation
of Britain, the humiliation of Tony Blair, of the British
military, of George Bush and the whole Iraqi shooting match. And
the master of humiliation - even if Tony Blair doesn't realise
it - is Iran, a nation which feels itself forever humiliated by
the West.
Oh how pleased the Iranians must have been to hear Messers Blair
and Bush shout for the "immediate" release of the luckless 15 -
this Blair-Bush insistence has assuredly locked them up for
weeks - because it is a demand that can be so easily ignored.
And will be.
"Inexcusable behaviour," roared Bush on Saturday - and the
Iranians loved it. The Iranian Minister meanwhile waited for a
change in Britain's "behaviour".
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Holocaust-denying President from hell,
calls Blair "arrogant and selfish" - and so say all of us, by
the way - after refusing to play to the crowd at the United
Nations. They'll release "serviceperson" Faye Turney. Then they
won't release her.
Veiled Faye with her cigarette and her backcloth of cheaply
flowered curtains, producing those preposterous letters of
cloying friendship towards the "Iranian people" while abjectly
apologising for the British snoop into Iranian waters - written,
I strongly suspect, by the lads from the Ministry of Islamic
Guidance - is the star of the Iranian show.
Back in 1980, when Tehran staged its much more ambitious
takeover of the US embassy, the star was a blubbering marine - a
certain Sergeant Ladell Maples - who was induced to express his
appreciation for Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution just
before America's prime-time television news.
The Iranians, you see, understand the West. And they understand
it much better than we understand - or bother to understand -
Iran.
We have forgotten the years of Allied occupation in the Second
World War, the deposition of the pro-German Shah and then,
humiliation of humiliations, the overthrow of the democratic
Prime Minister, Mohamed Mossadeq, engineered by the CIA's Allen
Dulles and an eccentric British scholar of Greek, an ex-Special
Operations Executive operative - "Monty" Woodhouse by name -
with a few guns and a pile of dollars. And the Iranians remember
well, how back came the Shah of Iran, our "policeman" in the
Gulf, the King of Kings, Light of the Aryans, descendant of
Cyrus the Great, to stretch out the young Iranian men and women
of the resistance on the toasting racks of their Savak
torturers.
Nor have the Iranians any real intention of putting Faye and her
chums in front of any court. They'd far rather have the Brits
chomping through their "nan" bread on Sky TV, courtesy, of
course, of Tehran's Arabic "Al-Alam" channel. And did you notice
that little "exclusive" label in the top left-hand corner of the
screen when Rifleman Nathan Summers decided to go public?
How the Iranians love mimicking their oppressors. When the gold
braid of the Ministry of Defence produce a complexity of maps to
prove our boys were in Iraqi waters, the Iranians produce a
humble coastguard with a Minotaur map to show that they were in
the Iranian briney.
The Union Jack still flies on their rubber boat - but the
Iranian banner floats above it. No one has yet explained, I
notice, why our boys and girls in blue carry rifles on their
sailing adventures if their duty is to hand them over when
attacked. Are we actually trying to supply the Revolutionary
Guards with more weapons?
But behind all this lie some dark questions - with, I fear, some
still unknown but dark answers. The Iranian security services
are convinced that the British security services are trying to
provoke the Arabs of Iran's Khuzestan province to rise up
against the Islamic Republic. Bombs have exploded there, one of
them killing a truck-load of Revolutionary Guards, and Tehran
blamed MI5. Outrageous, they said. Inexcusable.
The Brits made no comment, even when the Iranians hanged a man
accused of the killings from a crane; he had, they said, been
working for London.
Are the SAS in south-western Iran, just as the British claim the
Iranians are in south-eastern Iraq, harassing the boys in Basra
with new-fangled bombs? Will the Americans release the five
Iranians issuing visas to Kurds in Arbil whom they locked up a
couple of months ago. No, says Bush. Well, we shall see.
There is a lot we do not know - or care to know - about all
this. In the meantime, however, it will be left to Blair, Bush
and the merchants of the SKY-BBC-CNN-FOX-CBS-NBC-ABC axis of
shlock-and-awe to play the Iranian game. Will they put Faye on
trial? Will our boys be threatened with execution? Answer: no,
but be sure we'll soon be told by the Iranians that they are all
spies. A lie, needless to say. But Blair will fulminate and Bush
will roar and the Iranians will sit back and enjoy every second
of it.
The Iranians died in their tens of thousands to destroy Saddam's
legions. And now they watch us wringing our hands over 15 lost
souls. This is a big-time movie, the cinemascope of political
humiliation. And the Iranians not only know how to stage the
drama. They've even written Blair's script.
And he obligingly reads it to cue.
New TV footage shows captured servicemen
Footage of two of the 15 captured Royal Navy personnel was
broadcast on Iranian state television last night.
The television station Al-Alam released footage of the captives
standing in front of a map of the Persian Gulf where the sailors
and marines were captured 10 days ago.
The captives' speech was not initially broadcast, but one of the
station's newscasters said they had "confessed" to entering
Iranian waters "illegally", according to translations.
The British government maintains that the vessel was in Iraqi
waters. The footage was condemned by the Foreign Office last
night as "unacceptable".
The two men were seen pointing to a picture of a boat, while the
voiceover described how the servicemen had left HMS Cornwall on
23 March and arrived into Iranian waters in a small boat at 10am
local time. The broadcaster said hostages were receiving "good
and humanitarian treatment".
The same station last week released footage of Faye Turney, the
only woman among the captives, and Nathan Thomas Summers, whose
footage was released on Friday.
The Ministry of Defence said they would not be identifying the
servicemen. The families of all the personnel are understood to
have been contacted last night to alert them of Al-Alam's plan
to release the footage.
Prior to the release of the footage, Foreign Office minister Des
Browne had indicated that a diplomatic solution to the crisis
could be sought when he said that "direct bilateral talks" with
Iran over the capture were ongoing.
Helen McCormack
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
Click here
to comment on this and other articles
Send Page To a Friend
In accordance
with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational
purposes. Information Clearing House has no
affiliation whatsoever with the originator of
this article nor is Information ClearingHouse
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
|
