Playing With Ire
What is it with Iran? With their glorious history of human achievement, their brilliant past seems to have dimmed their sights to the present somehow. They wear their tradition like a badge of honour not appearing to realize that time has passed and their momentum toward the future has been fizzled away by their unrealistic clinging to a religion not of this time and age. Which wouldn't matter all that much if it was any religion but Islam, as Islam incorporates into its very essence not only the worship of Allah, but the path to living and political aspirations, all in one.Having lost their place in time they overcompensate for their shortcomings by shouting louder, boasting higher, threatening more and achieving very little in the long run. Their population has been impoverished in terms of opportunities, their state is in danger of becoming a well-deserved pariah, and their Ayatollahs remain defiantly unrepentant that they are now viewed as an uncivil, war-threatening danger to their region and the world at large. They've no need to repent, for they have ascertained through high-level discussions with the sacred one that they are but pursuing his divine commandments.
And they're playing with fire, continually raising the ire of those countries whose placement within the international community is stronger, whose economies dwarf Iran's, whose potential to wage a winning war trumps that of modern-day Persia with its dwarf of a president and its unheeding clerics. The United Nations, whose function is to broker for peace between restive nations, and to maintain order and goodwill within the international community, is seen to be wrong in its conclusions that only sanctions will bring the country to a full realization of its international obligations as a compliant member in good standing.
To that end sanctions have been placed on arms exports to the country and on the alternate purchase of weapons from Iran. There has been a freeze on the country's assets abroad, a call on UN-affiliated governments not to offer financial aid, all for the purpose of having Iran agree to suspend nuclear enrichment and reprocessing activities. Nowhere in the sanctions is there a reminder that one UN-member country does not threaten the existence of another with impunity; considered, doubtless, to be a lesser issue though not by the threatened country, since the two issues are complementary.
Iran is adamant that it is within its rights to progress in whatever ways it deems meaningful to itself, including its aspiration to acquire and maintain a nuclear-fuelled armament. The country is expressing its righteous indignation over the constraints the international community seeks to impose upon it, in the interests of restraining its nuclear ambitions. It's telling the world 'you tweak our nose, we'll finger your eyeballs'. Then sets about doing just that.
There are currently no fewer than 15 'captured' British seaman being held incommunicado in Tehran, being questioned with a view to extracting 'confessions' that their intent in serving their country is to do ill to Iran. Britain had a 'brisk' dialogue with the Iranian ambassador to Britain on two occasions leaving no doubt how seriously this breach of international etiquette is seen by London, demanding the immediate return of their seamen. But Iran is blithely going on its way, interrogating the hapless seamen to extract confessions of aggression.
The British fleet might have thought they were in Iraqi waters; Iran knows they were lurking within Iran's territorial waters. Business as usual with Iran; it truly does seem to enjoy its unending stand-offs with the West.
Labels: World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, March 25, 2007
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