With the Iran hostage crisis over, what next for those who try to get Iran attacked? If the US did leave it up to the British to "pick a fight" with the Iranian regime, than it seems that Her Majesty's Forces have so far made an absolute mess of things.

With the return of the British hostages, the score seemed to be Iran 1 - Britain 0. Of course, it was only half-time. "Fortunately", the day when the British hostages returned to UK soil, four British soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. As unfortunate as the incident is, it was "fortunate" from a political perspective, for without any evidence, Britain unofficially pointed the finger to Iran, claiming they had been supplying Iraqi terrorists/freedom fighters with explosives. One week after the bombing, the enquiry still had not been able to identify any Iranian complicity in the roadside bombing, but "Defence analysts" continued to brief against Iran. Prime Minister Blair personally commented: "It's far too early [to point to any Iranian involvement in that particular attack], but the general picture, as I have said before, is there are elements at least of the Iranian regime that are backing, financing, arming terrorism in Iraq."
From a lay perspective, it seems quite simple to identify whether a bomb is of Iranian fabrication or not. Hundreds of people have been convicted for bomb plots, in which the type of explosives, and other details, seem perfectly traceable by the experts. Yet we are led to believe that despite hundreds of bombs exploding in Iraq, no evidence remains to clearly identify where they originate from? Or perhaps the evidence simply does not point to Iran, and hence the true origins of these bombs can not be revealed?

The following Sunday (Easter), British newspapers headlined with the stories of returned hostages. Chief amongst these was the only female sailor, Faye Turney, who reportedly received over 80,000 pounds from the British tabloid newspaper "The Sun". That works out at roughly $10,000 per day she spent as a hostage. The Sun headlined her nightmare, or "Faye My Ordeal", which involved: "I feared being raped by Iranians." "Stripped to knickers in dingy cell." "The truth behind our TV smiles." That is hardly torture or inhumane treatment, noting they were after all prisoners. Furthermore, her fears of being raped are just that: her fears and they might have been totally illogical. And it is clear that in the end, they were totally groundless.
Others spoke of solitary confinement and how they were forced to admit their guilt, as otherwise they might face up to seven years in prison. After all, if they were in Iranian waters, they had indeed broken the laws of the country and could thus be expected to face a trial.
Iran 1 - Britain 1? As soon as Britain had scored, it seemed it was more of an own goal. There was widespread criticism in Britain about the fact that the Ministry of Defence had not merely allowed these sailors to speak out (which is not too unusual), but specifically that they were allowed to sell their story. Soon, the headlines ran that the four dead soldiers, killed by the roadside bomb, would not be able to sell their story to the newspapers. Commentators furthermore pointed out that the move was obviously part of the public relations battle between London and Tehran and served this agenda.

But as a good tactician, Iran had kept some of the television footage showing the hostage sailors back... and it seems that none of the hostages had informed the Ministry of Defence upon their release of this, for soon, it was Iran 2 - Britain 1. The extra footage that Iran released showed the hostages playing chess and table tennis - hardly showing the type of treatment they claimed they had received. And thus, several sailors were forced to add that though they had claimed they were kept under lock and key, in fact, at night, they had been allowed to be together.
Furthermore, what to make of the fact that during the press conference where the sailors were paraded to the Western media, apparently the top of the sheet given to the sailors by the Ministry of Defence had the words "READ THIS" in big bold letters written. Though it is clear that these sailors confessed to their Iranian captors as part of the game, the British MoD then used them as actors, asking them to play the roles of martyrs.
When Tehran was asked to comment on the statements made by the British hostages, the Iranian government dismissed the crew members' news conference as propaganda - just as Britain had condemned the crew members' frequent appearances on Iranian TV during their captivity.

Blair's Government then scored an own goal every day for the duration of one week. A government that was able to spin an entire nation into war with Iraq, now is no longer able to handle, let alone promote, the successful return of what they had set up as "15 British sailors snatched from their boat at gunpoint by Iranian forces in Iraqi waters". Day by day, the MoD tried to kill the controversy which it had created. On Easter Monday, the Minister of Defence Des Browne rushed out a statement, reversing his position that sailors could accept payment for their stories. The Navy reacted, it seems, briefing that it was their decision and they alone who could make such decisions... only to add that they felt they could not stop sailors from talking to the press... only to be told by former hostages that this was nevertheless what they were instructed to do before. By the end of the week, it seemed there was open warfare between the Navy and the Minister of Defence. If only it had been a few weeks later, it might have coincided with Blair's stepping down as Prime Minister. As he is still a few weeks away from ten years in Downing Street, advancing his departure was of course not an option.

The British government did not comment whether or not deals had been done to secure the release of the sailors. But Jalal Sharafi, the second secretary of the Iranian embassy in Iraq, who was abducted from his car in Baghdad in early February, just happened to walk out of captivity and into the Iranian embassy a few days before the release of the British sailors.
On Saturday, April 7, 2007, few newspapers reported that Jalal Sharafi accused the CIA of torturing him during his detention. The United States immediately denied any involvement in the Iranian's disappearance or release. Sharafi added that the CIA questioned him about Iran's relations with Iraq and assistance to various Iraqi groups. "Once they heard my response that Iran merely has official relations with the Iraqi government and officials, they intensified tortures and tortured me through different methods days and nights," he said.
Iranian state television said signs of torture were still visible on Sharafi. On April 11, Sharafi did appear before reporters in a wheelchair and showed his scars after outlining allegations of torture by Iraqi intelligence agents and an American. "They were beating, slapping, striking blows to different parts of my body," he said. "They were aiming to tarnish relations between Iran and Iraq." His ankles and feet were dotted with dark swellings, where the doctor said bruises inflicted by a cable had become infected. Fainter marks high on his back and neck showed where the skin had chafed away. The doctor also said he had suffered from internal bleeding from blows to his stomach and damage to an eardrum.

For Iran, these were but small potatoes compared to the big news. In the midst of all of this, Iranian television announced on April 9, that it had taken a step forward in its nuclear programme by moving to industrial scale enrichment. It is this programme that is also defying three United Nations resolutions and which is used as the club to beat Iran with.
At an extraordinary ceremony to celebrate Iran's now-annual "nuclear technology day", President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said: "With great honour, I declare that as of today our dear country has joined the nuclear club of nations and can produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale." It brought tears to his eyes.
After the ceremony, Iranian officials refused to specify to journalists the number of centrifuges they've begun operating, a key indicator of how far their nuclear weapons programme has progressed, leading some diplomats to query whether the claim might be at least partly a bluff. The UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, still has to verify the move as well. In the past, announcements of some advances have proved premature - and the programme is believed to be fraught with technical problems. Even if true, Iran is still far from able to use the material for a bomb, which is what the Bush Administration is constantly briefing the media about.

This public defiance of a UN resolution and the confrontation with the UK over its capture of British sailors seem deliberately calibrated to demonstrate the Iranians' resolve to show they are not afraid of international opinion - or are defiant of an imminent US attack.
Russia, who has helped Iran develop its atomic energy plants (as have several other countries, including France, which has a ten percent share in the installation), originally claimed a US attack was scheduled for April 6 - Good Friday. On April 8, Col. Gen. Leonid Ivashov, president of the Academy for Geopolitical Problems, a Russian think tank, said that the US continued with preparations for military action against Iran. "The release of the 15 British sailors and marines captured by Iran has robbed the US of a pretext to attack Iran, but the US has not given up plans to attack Iran militarily. [...] Military operations against Tehran will begin with the launch of at least two unexpected strikes using Tomahawk cruise missiles and air power in order to disable Iran's air defense capabilities," he said. "According to our data, up to 150 aircraft are to be involved in each strike on Iran. Land-based air defense systems will be disabled in the first place, then mobile short-range systems, which Tehran has (including some 30 new systems)."

With the original prediction of April 6 not having come true, the entire forecast of an imminent attack on Iran may merely be seen as "talk". But as early - or late - as mid-September 2006, CNN invited retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, previously a strategic scholar at various US Army War Colleges, to discuss the probability of a US military strike against Iran. Responding on how close, in his opinion, the Bush Administration was away from giving the go-ahead order regarding Iran, Gardiner unmistakably said: "It's been given. In fact, we've probably been executing military operations inside Iran for at least 18 months. The evidence is overwhelming."
But in 2004, Gardiner conducted a war game organized by the Atlantic Monthly magazine to gauge how an American president might respond, militarily or otherwise, to Iran's alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons, concluding that military strikes would at the end represent a quite inadequate instrument to confront the issue.

On April 18, the International Atomic Energy Agency's deputy director general, Olli Heinonen, confirmed that Tehran had indeed crossed a new threshold by producing fuel in its underground uranium enrichment plant. But the country is still believed to be a year or so away from the point of no return, which Israel regards as a red line in the Iranian quest for a nuclear capability.
The letter, dated 18 April, says that Iran was now running more than 1,300 centrifuges and had begun feeding small amounts of uranium gas into them. However, the IAEA does not appear to confirm that all 1,300 of the centrifuges are actually operating. As of last year, just over 300 were spinning to enrich uranium but experts said that the Iranians were experiencing difficulties in sustaining the operation.

The latest report coincided with a visit to Israel and Egypt by Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary. Israel's ambassador to the United States, Sallai Meridor, said it appeared that Tehran was going "full speed" with its effort to have mastered the technology of enriching uranium needed to produce a bomb and that world powers must act.

With some of the British sailors' bank balances now nicely lined, the obvious question is: what next? With the easiest scenario, a border confrontation, now disastrously torpedoed into the ground, already more exotic means to start a war will need to be found. Thank Allah perhaps for the Iranian commitment to nuclear energy and the proliferation of their nuclear programme, which in itself may still be more than sufficient cause to entice the US. If not, past experience with Iraq, in the 1980s, has shown that it is sufficient cause for the Israeli army to intervene. But with the landscape of the Middle East radically changed since the 1980s, the question is whether Israel, even with the backing of the US and potentially the UN, would get away with such a strike. And if Israel - or anyone else - ever wanted to inflame the Middle East in an Armageddon-style war, having Israel attack Iran's nuclear facility might just be the trigger... provided countries like Iran would want to retaliate, and retaliate by declaring war, which in itself seems to have become so "20th century".