The Carter Game

Why did the Iranians seize the Brit sailors?

Ledeen's got the most-plausible - if scariest - explanation so far.

The Iranians were reacting to a Brit "provocation":

The Brits were laying down a network of sensors to detect the movement of ships toward major Iraqi oil terminals. The Iranians considered that a bit of a threat. So they attacked.

And why, you might ask, did the Iranians feel threatened?

Because they were planning to attack (or have their surrogates attack) the oil terminals, silly.

And why attack the oil terminals?

Because they want to defeat President Bush in November, and they figure if they can get the price of oil up to around $60 a barrel, he'll lose to Kerry.

Not to mention a considerable side benefit: At $60 a barrel, they can buy whatever they may be lacking to get their atomic bombs up and running.

It's not that hard to understand the mullahs once you learn to think as they do, and understand their hopes and fears.

What do they hope? That Bush will lose; that the Coalition will collapse; that they can dominate Iraq and create an Islamic republic in the Iranian image.

Let's think about this.

The Iranians no doubt remember fondly the 1979-80 hostage crisis, which essentially sealed Jimmy Carter's fate (although he had two strikes already). Perhaps they think that the Bush Administration is made of the same stuff Carter was?

Hewitt knows better:

Bulletin to the mullahs: Blair ain't Carter. Nor is Bush. Remember the Falklands and keep in mind that a number of onlookers would love an excuse to reduce your nuke operations to smoldering ruins. Of course the reports on internal instability that flow out of Iran with regularity suggest that the powers-that-be (and which may-be-slipping) might need a summer drama to keep the streets full of their goons.

Better yet: do they remember the last time they tried to manipulate the politics of the west, by sending speedboats with Revolutionary Guards and RPG7s after the oil rigs (more or less what Ledeen is predicting)? Reagan pressed back, flooding the Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz with US Navy ships. The situation verged on an undeclared war: Iranians shot at American ships (with some success, if I recall correctly - the US Navy went on a binge of re-arming destroyers with short-range weapons that could hit speedboats, the type of thing that hadn't been needed since Vietnam); a US submarine's "accidental" flare (accounts vary) burned an Iranian minesweeper to the waterline; a US destroyer shot down an Iranian jetliner that may or may not have been testing US radar and responses.

And oil prices surged, but not high enough or long enough to derail the recovery or the Reagan re-election.

Strange days. And, if you're a mullah, probably pretty scary.

I hope.

Posted by Mitch at June 22, 2004 02:24 PM