DAR AL HARB - U.S.A.: HOSTAGE TAKING IS NOTHING NEW FOR THE IRANIANS, IT'S JUST LIKE THEM TO DO IT

Just Like the Mullahs
Taking hostages is just standard operating procedure for Iran.
By Michael Ledeen

The deep thinkers now torturing themselves for an explanation of the Iranian seizure of 15 British hostages should reread the ancient wisdom contained in the fable of the scorpion and the crocodile. The scorpion is desperate to cross the river, but can’t swim, so he begs the croc to give him a ride. The croc is afraid the scorpion will sting him. The scorpion promises he won’t. The croc gives him the ride. As they get to the far bank, the scorpion stings. The croc is disgusted and cries out “why did you do that? You promised...” And the scorpion says, “but I’m a scorpion.”

Ditto for the mullahs. They took the hostages because that is what they do. They’ve been doing it for a long time. To get a sense of how big this phenomenon has been, just consider that in January, 1989, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Amal reported that, since the mid-Seventies, when the epidemic of kidnapping began, more than 100 hostages had been taken in more than 75 separate incidents. One of the leading kidnappers was the Iranian creature, Islamic Jihad, which thoughtfully explained the practice in a letter to Javier Perez de Cuellar, then secretary-general of the United Nations, in August, 1991:

The issue of detainees and prisoners in the world is one of the outcomes of our confrontation with the powers of hegemony, which America leads as the mother of all corruption along with its germ Israel...As such, the issue of detainees is the reaction of Muslim freedom fighters to those practices. It is also an effort to release our mujahideen who are in prison. And this kind of reaction will continue as long as we are facing the same deeds, and because we believe in the necessity of work to release our freedom fighters from the prisons of occupied Palestine and Europe, and to solve the problem of those we hold in our prisons.

That’s all you need to know, really. The Iranians have two basic reasons to take hostages. One is to break our will and drive us out of the region; the other is to trade their prey for their comrades now in our grip, of whom there is a significant number (several hundred Iranian intelligence and military officers have been captured in Iraq in recent months, according to good U.S. government sources).

Why now? Because now is when they succeeded in doing it; they’ve been trying all along.

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Pertinent Links:

1) Just Like the Mullahs