{"id":4761,"date":"2009-05-11T07:18:28","date_gmt":"2009-05-11T12:18:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4761"},"modified":"2009-05-11T10:17:13","modified_gmt":"2009-05-11T15:17:13","slug":"the-54th-hostage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4761","title":{"rendered":"The 54th Hostage"},"content":{"rendered":"

The good news?\u00a0 Roxana Saberi, Fargo native, former Miss NoDak and NPR reporter, held for three months in an Iranian prison on apparently-bogus espionage charges, will be released soon:<\/a><\/p>\n

Saberi, a 31-year-old who was born in the United States and who has reported for the BBC, National Public Radio and other media, was detained in the Islamic state more than a month ago.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The perhaps not so good news?\u00a0 She may have been released because the Obama Administration gave the Iranians what they wanted (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded that Tehran immediately release the journalist during a news conference on Thursday at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels.<\/p>\n

She earlier said the United States planned to invite Tehran to a conference on Afghanistan, in a first overture to Iran.<\/p>\n

The United States is reviewing its isolation policy on the Islamic Republic, including whether to open up a low-level diplomatic office there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the one hand, good thing that Saberi’s been released.<\/p>\n

On other other; if indeed the release was accompanied by big concessions from the US, that’s probably not a great precedent.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:\u00a0 My NARN cohost Ed Morrissey at Hot Air (thanks for the link!) notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Bush administration also made overtures towards Iran on Afghanistan on a similar basis; the holdup wasn\u2019t a lack of US invitation, but Iranian recalcitrance on accepting a more public connection with the US on the issue.\u00a0 The Bush administration had conducted talks with Iranian representatives on Iraqi security on several occasions over the last few years, so this isn\u2019t exactly a new concept, and wouldn\u2019t have triggered Saberi\u2019s release.<\/p>\n

There may still be a stinking concession at the heart of this, but the Afghanistan conference won\u2019t be it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I could have written more clearly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The US and Iran have been talking – on some\u00a0low, diplomatic level or another – for years.\u00a0 Every administration has had some <\/em>sort of dealing with Teheran.\u00a0 And Ed notes correctly that we have worked with Iran on things like Afghanistan in the recent past, and that the Afganistan meetings aren’t a quid pro quo <\/em>for releasing Saberi.<\/p>\n

My biggest concern – let me write it clearly this time – is this: given that Tehran’s mullas have always <\/em>acted (as any government normally will) in Iran’s government’s interest, and that the Iranians have just gotten away with kidnapping an American (ten days after Obama’s inauguration, in fact), is the old ’70s-’80s tactic of grabbing Americans back on the table as a means of exacting concessions from a weak, inexperienced president?\u00a0 Just like 30 years ago?<\/p>\n

Time will tell.\u00a0 But I don’t think this is a good start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The good news?\u00a0 Roxana Saberi, Fargo native, former Miss NoDak and NPR reporter, held for three months in an Iranian prison on apparently-bogus espionage charges, will be released soon: Saberi, a 31-year-old who was born in the United States and who has reported for the BBC, National Public Radio and other media, was detained in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war-on-terror","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}