Iranian Hostage Crisis II: British Boogaloo

Well, the tense situation between Iran and Britain over the captured sailors in disputed waters took another fun disconcerting turn today when Iran released video of the sailors, including a female soldier who was dressed in a head scarf (she alone will be released for now, officials said).

When I first heard this news last week, my initial reaction was admittedly 'Thank god it was British sailors and not ours.' There's no question that if this had been our guys, President Cheney Bush would've immediately declared WWIII. We know that the administration is so desperate for an excuse to confront Iran, that they trotted out that bullshit presentation last month about supposedly Iranian weapons in Iraq... and oddly stopped mentioning it once people started asking some pesky questions about proof, etc. So you can imagine how they'd react to this.

So far, the British government is taking the right stance. Strong, but sane.

Former U.K.-er Andrew Sullivan, for instance, urges calm: "This, however, is a serious matter and the plain deception of the Iranian regime strongly indicates that this is a deliberate provocation. All the more reason, perhaps, not to take the bait. Slowly, international pressure on Tehran is rising; isolation is growing and this incident can be leveraged to increase that isolation at the U.N.. This may, of course, be a signal that Tehran is going to react to greater sanctions with greater belligerence. In all of this, the fear, of course, is that hotheads will prevail. But this is a time to be cool."

Pray for a resolution. With so many people eager for war, I hope they end up disappointed.