TEHERAN Hundreds of Iranian radicals stormed the British compound in Tehran last night, replacing the Union flag with a Palestinian one in protest against Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
British officials will be assessing whether the security breach, unprecedented in recent years, was an isolated incident or presages further violent demonstrations.
A hardline Iranian news agency said that protests against Britain and Egypt, whose embassy was also targeted, would continue.
Hardline Iranian students have often staged noisy protests outside the British embassy in Tehran, hurling stones and petrol bombs at the building, but Tuesday night’s incident was the first time in decades that they have breached diplomatic territory.
Does anyone have a disturbing sense of deja vu? One of the biggest factors in my joining the Army, after my 5 incompletes at the UW my freshman semester, was the tremendous shame I felt during Jimmah Cahtah's sad reign. Malaise, Inflation, sky-rocketing interest rates, and worst of all 444 days of fecklessness after the Iranians invaded sovereign US soil and kidnapped our diplomats.
The Foreign Office confirmed Iranian media reports that demonstrators had “trespassed” onto the compound at Gulhak but said the situation had been resolved swiftly and all embassy staff were safe. Iranian police were reported to have intervened quickly to eject the radicals.
Does anyone think they were not allowed to do this by the same Iranian police, and when they feel it is timely they will go even further. The Iranians and their nuke programs were front and center in the minds of most Middle Eastern experts. Cue Michael Ledeen.
Israeli leaders say they want to bring an end to the rocket and missile attacks from Gaza. But, as opposition leader Netanyahu said, that can’t be done without regime change.
Our goal should be twofold - stopping the attacks on our cities and eliminating the threat of rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip…Stopping the attacks can be done within a short period of time, while eliminating the threat of rocket attacks from Gaza will entail toppling the Hamas rule over the Strip and uprooting the Iranian base there.
The last five words are key, because, as others have said, this is one more battle in the terror war in which we have been engaged since 2001. The Battle of Gaza cannot be understood as a thing in itself, but only as part of a broader whole: the war against the terror masters. And Iran is the most lethal, the most dangerous, and the most aggressive terror master in the world today.
Like the global totalitarian movements and regimes that threatened Western civilization in the last century, the Iranians come with a messianic ideology that admits no compromise with its enemies. This war will only end with a winner and a loser, not with two contented negotiators. We can win this war–we’ve delivered a stunning defeat to Iran and her proxies in Iraq, for example–and our most powerful weapons are political, not military. Had we taken the war to Tehran, the terror forces in Gaza would, at a minimum, be a lot weaker today, as they would be in Afghanistan and Lebanon. But we continue to dither, and the new American leaders are fooling themselves when they say that vigorous diplomacy can induce the mullahs to retreat. It won’t happen, any more than the Israelis got the terrorists to retreat from all-out war against the Jews when the Oslo Agreement was signed, or when Rabin shook hands with Arafat. It only delayed the days of reckoning, at the cost of many lives, mostly of innocents, on both sides.
I can't agree that taking the war to Teheran would have been the right move. I don't think we have any where near the will as a country for another land war, that could be much bloodier than the ones we already have. Plus we would risk alienating the Iranian populace which, although beaten down by the Mullahs, is not as radically Islamized as the theocrats. Many look longingly back to the days under the Shah when Iran was a secular, liberal place. We must enable them to throw off the religious yoke and reclaim their country. That is a job for the CIA and Special Ops. We must support student groups that oppose the regime and empower women's and secular organizations, or help create them.
A President Obama should greatly increase our human intelligence and guerrilla warfare capabilities since there need to be activities behind the scenes in support of our military and diplomatic efforts, not just in Iran, but everywhere.
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