Sunday, May 07, 2006
Iran and our "traditional allies": the sorry history
Yes, its time for another excerpt from Mark Bowden's Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam
President Carter's crackdown in the first week of April had proved nothing more than his futility. The break in diplomatic ties was dramatic but clearly overdue, and a decision to cancel all entry visas for Iranians was perceived as primarily symbolic, because most such travel had come to a halt anyway. His call for allies to break ties and join in atrade embargo succeeded only in expossing a distressing lack of unanimity: England's response was lukewarm; Canada promised to consult with other nations first; Japan said it would "carefully study" the idea; West Germany declined outright; Denmark announced it was "hesitant" to break ties; Italy called such punitive steps a "mistake." All of these nations, of course, publicly deplored the taking of hostages but none decided to join the United States in pressuring Iran for their release.
A foreign government held our diplomats hostage, an indisputable act of war and a gross violation of international law, and our allies wouldn't so much as curtail their trade with Iran. Some of these allies -- and it is all I can take to skip the scare quotes, but these countries are, in fact, allies -- wouldn't even pretend to consider it.
Sometimes you have to go it alone.
2 Comments:
By 
Consul-At-Arms, at
Sun May 07, 04:29:00 PM:
Thanks for recapping this. I've linked to you here: http://consul-at-arms.blogspot.com/2006/05/re-iran-and-our-traditional-allies.html
By 
, at
Tue May 09, 12:28:00 PM:
I wonder if that was a function of the weakness of our allies, or our allies' funamental mistrust of Carter?
Six months after the situation unfolds and he finally decides to break of diplomatic relations? If I were the British, I'd be thinking "Oh, NOW he gets around to it. This is going to end badly and I won't have my country dragged down with it."
Or something like that. Who knows?
