Busting Iran

We’ll eventually have to fight Iran, but should do so at a time of our choosing – not the Mullahs’. In the meantime here’s how we get our hostages back.

The current useless Brit response:

Efforts to secure the release of 15 Royal Navy personnel held by Iran will enter a “different phase” if diplomatic moves fail, Tony Blair has said.

Downing Street said the UK could end up releasing evidence proving the group had not ventured into Iranian waters…

Britain’s former ambassador to Iran, Sir Richard Dalton, said “different phase” could mean generating pressure on Iran from the international community.

“I expect he means that we shall have to step up criticism and generate additional international pressures on Iran,” he said.

Given the failure of Messrs Blair and Dalton’s “criticism” and “pressure” to stop the Mullahs building nukes, that’s a tad optimistic. Here’s a list of phased sanctions, starting nice and getting nasty.

1. Detain 15 of their London diplomats on spying charges

Capture them in an embassy raid by the SAS – a repeat of their last one in 1980.

The Mullahs won’t care about their people but they’ll hate looking weak.

2. Expel their ambassador and the rest of their London embassy staff

Say this is “for their own protection” from angry relatives of the hostages.

3. Propose a UN Security Council resolution to stop their refined gas imports

Although the Mullahs ship out oil, they have little refining capacity, so blocking imports would shut them down.

Of course some combination of France, Russia and China will veto this, but that provides cover for…

4. Prepare a special forces raid to rescue the hostages

This would be an Entebbe style raid, for which we need the exact location of the hostages.

5. Mess up their finances

Much of the world’s financial transactions go through London, so it may be easy to lose or delay any connected with Iran.

6. Locate the hostages by announcing them KIA

The Mullahs are bound to respond with pictures and videos of happy, smiling prisoners.

Analysis of these images may allow us to locate them. If not the Brits should announce the images are forged and some hostages are presumed dead.

The Mullahs will then grant access to prove the hostages are alive, and that will probably enable us to locate them. In that case…

6. Launch the special forces raids

Rescue the hostages.

If that fails…

7. Schedule a joint nuclear submarine exercise with Israel

That would be the entire Brit nuclear powered fleet of ballistic missile and attack subs working with the Israel’s second-strike subs. The Mullahs will hate this.

Of course the Israelis would have to hand over the heads of their diplomat gropers, but for this help, they’ll surely oblige.

****

That should get the Mullahs’ attention.

Chechnya Now, Europe Tomorrow?

Putin continues to inflict horrors on Chechnya. Europe may be next.

Here’s a London Daily Telegraph embed with Putin’s forces, led by a turncoat warlord:

In an attempt to stem the steady trickle of Russian casualties, 11,000 of whom are estimated to have died since the second Chechen war erupted in 1999, Mr Putin has made Yamadayev his main battlefield commander….

We reached a bend in the river and before us lay the first signs of success: the corpses of four rebels scattered across the river bank.

Two appeared to have been finished off with a bullet to the back of the head. A third had blown himself up with his own grenade in an attempt to avoid capture.

The Yamadayevtsi, who often like to severe the heads of their dead victims, have a brutal reputation when it comes to prisoners. Human rights activists say captive rebels, as well as innocent civilians who run foul of the Eastern Battalion, are frequently sexually abused and then tortured to death.

Torture:

Human Rights Watch said that its documentation of more than a hundred cases of torture, taken together with research conducted by leading Russian human rights groups, strongly suggests that torture in Chechnya is commonplace.

Human Rights Watch also said that this finding, together with de facto impunity for torturers, strongly suggests a widespread and systematic practice of torture in Chechnya.

The Muslim rebels in Chechya are not plaster saints, but Putin has destroyed their nation without a peep from the usual suspects – AP, Reuters, the EU, France, Germany, the Dems.

Putin has learned valuable lessons from this conflict – exclude reporters, destroy the towns, murder, rape, and torture. This may be the future for a Europe that won’t defend itself.

UN Watch

UN Watch encourages the UN to live up to its charter, so the president of the UN Human Rights Council wants to bury it. So it goes.

UN Watch:

Headed by Ambassador Alfred H. Moses (Chair), former US Ambassador to Romania…UN Watch is governed by an international board whose members include:

Per Ahlmark (European Co-Chair), former Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden;

Professor Irwin Cotler, international human rights advocate and former Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of Canada…

Ambassador Max Jakobson, former Permanent Representative of Finland to the UN in New York…

The list of worthies goes on.

But when UN Watch reprimanded the UN Human Rights Committee for its pogrom against Israel, the UN chairman threatened to censor its testimony (hat tip LGF):

Here’s the resume of the censor (my ellipsis):

Born in 1957 in…Mexico, Mr. De Alba holds a B.A. in international affairs from the Institut d’Etudes des Relations Internationales in Paris.

(He)…joined the Mexican Foreign Service in 1981 (then) served as Chief of the Political Affairs Section of the United Nations in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1983 to 1988 and as Third Secretary at the Permanent Mission of Mexico to the United Nations from 1983 to 1986…

(He) was Director of Education and Sports in the Ministry of Planning and Budget, from 1989 to 1990, and Adviser to the Minister for Foreign Affairs in 1988.

From 1991 to 1993, (he) held the post of Director of Humanitarian and Social Affairs for the United Nations in the Foreign Ministry.

(From) 1998 to 2001, he was Director General for the United Nations in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, served as the Deputy Permanent Representative of Mexico to the United Nations from March 2002 to March 2004.

He’s a typical member of the Mexican elite – never had a proper job, with a life experience spanning Mexico (as corrupt as Saudi Arabia and China), France, and the UN.

UN Watch is never going to de-infest the UN of creeps like this.

Familiarity And Contempt

Olmert’s office just humiliated a senior Brit diplomat, showing contempt for both diplomatic protocol and its Brit friends. For Israel’s own good, the Brits should administer a hefty slap.

The story (my ellipsis):

The Foreign Ministry has issued a formal apology to Britain’s deputy consul-general to Israel following an upsetting incident during a visit to the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, where she was subjected to a strip-search despite having diplomatic credential…

(Janet) Rogan, the deputy head of Britain’s diplomatic mission to Israel, was accompanying a delegation of British Treasury officials who were holding several high-profile meetings with Israeli officials.

The security guards demanded Rogan go through a physical security check, to which she refused, presenting her diplomatic credentials. An exchange of harsh words developed and Rogan was ultimately taken behind a screen and physically searched, having to lift up her shirt.

Rogan stated in her complaint that the other members of the delegation were shocked at what had transpired and that by the end of the process Rogan was upset and had begun crying.

A formal apology was issued to and Israeli Chief of Protocol Yitzhak Eldan apologized to Rogan in person.

Sexually abusive officials aren’t unique to Israel – there are plenty in the TSA and UK Immigration. And Israel is a democratic nation with a free press, which is why this story surfaced. But these perverts do a lot of damage. They’re often women, and prey on people they see as weak – young women and the old.

Blair’s security team would never strip search the Israeli ambassador in London, and Olmert’s team wouldn’t touch Condoleezza Rice, so it seems there’s an institutional contempt of the Brits in Olmert’s office.

His security team is also porous, because its sexual predators focus on the weak and miss the real terrorists – almost invariably strong males.

So, the Brits will want to encourage Israelis to respect them, and help Olmert to clean house.

And in the dirty world of diplomacy, that means either withholding help or aiding Isarel’s enemies.