British Hostages Released Without a Deal

So Tony Blair came out and unequivocally stated that no deal of any kind was arranged with Iran in any shape or form. Well I suppose we take him at his word. The BBC has a story tackling that angle and from what I've read on the web, perhaps the goal of Iran was served without a deal. Just releasing them as a "gift" to the British people may have helped them in putting this behind them for now.

I think it just goes to show how hollow they/ Iran really are in terms of being able to back this up. The British and Americans have managed to take some of their people down in Iraq and are interrogating them right now. They've also managed to get some of the Iranian regime's highest placed military folks to defect to the West. What kind of intelligence the Allies have gathered is unknown right now. But my guess is that if anything happens in Iran over the course of the next 9-12 months, it may well be as a result of that information gathering.

Here's an excerpt from the BBC on the hostage release. There's a good question being asked at the end, which is, "How do you prevent this from happening again?", especially considering Iran's track record. My suggestion, follow Newt Gingrich's strategy which I posted earlier and block all gasoline/ Naval ships and get the Germans to squeeze them financially speaking. Iran will collapse shortly their after as the public bears the brunt of gasoline shortages and a lack of $$ coming in to finance their house of cards...

"In my view it would be utterly naive to believe that our personnel would have been released unless both elements of the strategy had been present," he said.

A senior government source told the BBC there had been a lot of willingness from the governments in the region and Arab world to lobby Iran, and this had an impact - as did a swift UN Security Council statement.

He added that while no deal was done by the UK over Iranians being held in Iraq, it was possible that the Iraqi government might have taken some sort of initiative.

Shadow defence secretary Liam Fox told the BBC that the government was right not to have made any concessions, but he said Mr Blair still needed to answer some questions.

"The main question is what can we do differently to prevent something like this happening in the future," he said.

Here's a link to the whole article.

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