Brit Blames US for Iran Taking Hostages

You had to know it was coming. Someone, somewhere, would find a way to place the blame on the US for Iran's taking 15 British sailors hostage. Patrick Cockburn's Exclusive Report in today's The Independent (UK) does just that:

A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.

Ten weeks? The Iranians waited ten weeks to retaliate? And then, when they were finally ready, they got back but good at us--the United States of America, remember--by abducting British Royal Navy personnel. Yep, I see the direct link. Uh huh. Right.

Cockburn devotes most of his report to describing the US raid that resulted in the capture of five "relatively junior Iranian officials," but not the capture of two big targets.

The two senior Iranian officers the US sought to capture were Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, according to Kurdish officials.

He ends his report this way:

For more than a year the US and its allies have been trying to put pressure on Iran. Security sources in Iraqi Kurdistan have long said that the US is backing Iranian Kurdish guerrillas in Iran. The US is also reportedly backing Sunni Arab dissidents in Khuzestan in southern Iran who are opposed to the government in Tehran. On 4 February soldiers from the Iraqi army 36th Commando battalion in Baghdad, considered to be under American control, seized Jalal Sharafi, an Iranian diplomat.

The raid in Arbil was a far more serious and aggressive act. It was not carried out by proxies but by US forces directly. The abortive Arbil raid provoked a dangerous escalation in the confrontation between the US and Iran which ultimately led to the capture of the 15 British sailors and Marines - apparently considered a more vulnerable coalition target than their American comrades. (emphasis added)

Cockburn offers no connection between the two events, beyond his own opinion. People see what they want to see, and apparently Cockburn wants to see the US taking the blame for the kidnapping. Heaven forbid that Iran should be held accountable for its own actions.