When this story broke, I compared the British response to their response two decades ago to the Argentine seizure of the Falkland Islands. Now Reza Bayegan in FrontPage expands upon the new British spirit of appeasement and dhimmitude:
The British government's policy towards the Islamic Republic is not a policy put together in the light of what the Iranian regime in reality stands for. It is rather sketched on the basis of what Jack Straw and some others in the Foreign Office hope one day it might evolve into. It is grounded in self-deception, bewilderment and irresponsibility. The mullahs on the other hand have no illusions about their enemies and their allies. Like all well-trained, well-experienced terrorists they can immediately sense the moral confusion and intellectual perplexity of their victims and use it to their greatest political advantage. They are toying with Jack Straw the same way they manipulated the weakness and confusion of the Carter administration.Having successfully flexed their muscles in the Arvand Rood waterway (Shatt al-Arab in Arabic) by seizing the British vessel, the mullahs know full well that they face no retaliation. They are complacent in their assurance that all the dismay expressed by London over the abduction of their sailors will amount to nothing and is a mere face- saving exercise. As The Guardian reported in its July 2 issue, the Foreign Office is unlikely to consider a drastic response “since it cherishes its diplomatic links with Tehran.”
Accordingly the British government has adopted the same cringing, guilt-ridden, apologetic attitude as that of the Clinton administration (remember Madeleine Albright's apology to Iran for “past American errors”). Jack Straw is banking on what he calls “bit-by-bit, progress” in relations between Iran and the United Kingdom. In fact, what we witness seems increasingly like bit-by-bit surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran rather than a clearly thought out and integrated foreign policy.
The British unwillingness to stand up to the regime in Tehran is partly due to what is taking place at the moment in Iraq. The war waged against Saddam Hussein with its obvious benefit of ridding the world of a cruel dictator has incurred huge human and material loss. The mullahs, instead of waiting for their turn to become the next dispatched member of the Axis of Evil, have been fighting the war for their survival on Iraqi soil by supporting the terrorists and sabotaging the establishment of democracy in that country. Their diabolical efforts have paid off. Fatigued both militarily and economically by the war in Iraq, the United States would have great difficulty in commencing a war on a new front.
This allied exhaustion has offered the clerical dictatorship a new lease on life, which the mullahs are using to push forward with their plan to acquire of nuclear weapons. On June 27, 2004 – in defiance of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – the Iranian government decided to resume centrifuge construction. It is only a (brief) matter of time before the most dangerous regime on earth will be armed with the most destructive means to destroy human life. If such a nightmare is realized, Jack Straw's “bit-by-bit, progress” with Iran can only mean inching toward Hell on earth.
Jack Straw is a former president of the NUS, the National Union of Students. Its leftist politics can be easily imagined; the NUS worldview he held thirty years ago remains the present worldview of Jack Straw. He is ignorant; he appears to believe that British "colonialism" is responsible for drawing the borders of Iraq and Iran -- apparently he remains unaware that it was the Treaty of Erzerum in 1847 that drew the borders between Persia and the Ottoman Empire, including the longest, most important border between Iran, and what is present-day Iraq (Percy Cox not only had nothing to do with it, but was not even born). The sponsor of that treaty was not England, but Russia. Other historical howlers by Straw can be found by googling "Jack Straw" and either "J. B. Kelly" or "Conor Cruise O'Brien" -- which will bring you to a critical article, published last year in The Telegraph).
It is remarkable not only how he, and of course the Foreign Office -- where is A. K. S. Lambton to offer advice? where is Sir Reader Bullard? where are the people who actually know something about the peoples of the region, and about the full malevolence of the Muslim world-view? Are the British now, so aggressive in persuading the Dulles brothers and Kermit Roosevelt to arrange for the toppling of "weepy Mossadegh" back in 1953, now terrified of the mullahs who have far less support, within Iran, than Mossadegh did? Are they sitting around, waiting for the Americans, or the Israelis, to handle the little problem of Iran's nuclear facilities (of which there is certain evidence, unlike the guesswork that went on in the case of Iraq -- not that that guesswork, even if wrong, was not under the circumstances perfectly sensible)? And if the United States, or if Israel, destroys those facilities, will Jack Straw and, not the Foreign Office (for there are many people in the Foreign Office, not all of them fools or knaves), but those in the Foreign Office who shill for Islam and hence for the Arabs and the current Iranians, going to denounce the modern equivalent of Gary Cooper -- America or Israel -- as it yet again makes the world safer for the cowardly townsfolk who now feel safe enough to turn -- as even in "High Noon" they did not -- on the Marshal (America, Israel)himself.
The pretentions of these pashas and beglerbegs are absurd, except in the eyes, and therefore in the cringing and whinging calculations, of Jack Straw, and Dominique de Villepin, and Javier Solana, and Chris Patten, and a whole host of simpletons and quislings who preside, step by step, over one appeasing act after another. Eventually, facts will catch up with them, and the judgment of history will not be kind.
Never cared for Mrs Thatcher's [Iron Lady] domestic policies but at least the old gal would have stood up to Iran. Straw is PATHETIC and aptly
named. What happened to the proud refrain of BRITAIN, NEVER NEVER WILL BE SLAVES...
Our Foreign Office is one of the last relics of the aristocratic world-view. It is controlled not by the politicians but by the civil servants.
Consider the betrayal of Israel because of the promises made by a low-ranking British Officer (T.E. Lawrence).
The spare sons of the aristocracy used to go into the Services, usually the Army, the ministry (Cof E) or the Foreign Office. Some did, and still do, sterling service, but others created a class-ridden public school (Private schools in the USA) environment.
The interests of these latter group were, and still are, roughly as follows, in approximate order of priority:
Land, status and its inheritance.
War.
Huntin' , shootin', fishin'.
Horses and the races - e.g. Royal Ascot.
Women (gals)
Wives - for the provision of heirs.
Religion - for the maintenance of social order.
Anti-semitism - because they had to borrow money .
Now compare that list with the interests of the ruling classes of Islam.
This identity of interest and priority led to a natural empathy with Islam. The Foreign Office has always been full of Arabists. The stated policies of goverments have been frustrated and/or changed by these experienced manipulators. They are not in total control but they are endemic and Jack Straw's world-view is meat and drink to these people.
Whatever else one thinks about when one thinks about something called "Arabists" in the Foreign Office, the word "aristocratic" does not come to mind. The most famous anti-Zionist of all, Bevan, was a Marxist-tinged miner. The word does come to mind, however, when one reads the list of Christian Zionists who are discussed by the historian Barbara Tuchman in her study "Bible and Sword." Aside from the obvious Lord Beaconsfield (who may not count as an aristocrat in many books, except in his bearing and manner), there was Lord Salisbury (who proposed that Great Britain take "the country [Syria, including what in the West was known asPalestine] for ourselves" to dispose of as the English saw fit, Lord Palmerston (who recommended that the Jews be allowed to return to Palestine), the Earl of Shaftesbury (who even when he was Lord Ashley enthusiastically foresaw what was to come: "Took leave this morning of Young, who has just been been appointed Her Majesty's Vice-Consul at Jerusalem! What a wonderful event it is! The ancient city of the people of God is about to resume a place among the nations, and England is the first of the Gentile kingdoms that ceases 'to tread her down.'") as well as many others, including Lord Cromer (he of Egypt, about whom a second-rate and cliche-ridden biography was recently written by a former PLO groupie, as J. B. Kelly once described him to me, from St. Antony's, having somehow obtained a grandly-titled chair at Harvard, his earlier enthusiasms reportedly undiminished), Lord Milner, and Lord Robert Cecil, who had served in Cromer's administration in Egypt, and written the once (and deservedly) famous "Memoirs of an Egyptian Official" which begins with an epigraph once known to all those in the Foreign Office who were forced to deal with the pashas and beys and beglerbegs of the Muslim East: "Here lies one who tried to hustle the East." It is a motto they seem to have forgotten.
But the Foreign Office Arabists now? "Aristocratic"? The last real expert, whom the Foreign Office could call on, in Muslim matters was A. K. S. Lambton, now over 90 and in retirement near Durham, the great expert on Persia (her advice was sought, one might recall, when plans for "weepy Mossadegh" were being discussed), whose aunt was married to Harold Macmillan, "Uncle Bobbitty" to her, and who was herself the daughter of a real aristocrat.
Those who have been "Foreign Office Arabists" are mostly now hired, directly or indirectly, by Arab interests, just as their counterparts in the State Deparment have been set to work. Their mission has been clear: make sure that nothing is done that might seriously cause the adoption of a plan that might diminish OPEC's revenues, even though it would have been fairly simple, thirty years ago, to recapture much of the oligopolistic rents charged by OPEC, with Saudi Arabia as the malevolent linchpin of the greedy cartel. Two, keep all attention away from the subject of Islam, its tenets, its attitudes, its atmospherics. Ensure that the dreamy belief that it is Israel, its existence, its "outrages," that is the source of Muslim "humiliation" and indignation, and that there is otherwise no reason that we should not all of us get along swimmingly. Three, make sure that the West, especially Western Europe, believing One and Two, does nothing to prevent the migration of Muslims, in considerable numbers, to the Bilad al-kufr, or Lands of the Infidels.
Aristocrats among the Arabists in the Foreign Office? Johnny Jump-Ups, Timeservers, declasse hirelings and fools. With, of course, the honorable exceptions, who intelligently must lie low until their moment comes.