Failing the Iranian Hostage Test

Iranian-born journalist Amir Taheri, writing in the New York Post, brings a clear historical perspective to bear on the current British hostage situation, and the implications are sobering for those who wish to wave away the importance of incident.

During the past 30 years hostage the mullah regime has availed themselves of other hostage-taking opportunities as either a prelude to an either internal crackdown or a blustery confrontation with international powers. In this case the U.K.-sponsored sanctions at the United Nations are the obvious catalyst.

This is therefore a chance to see how the world reacts, to gauge the firmness of the response, and therefore the tolerance that can be expected for future belligerent actions. Taheri thinks they have their answer:

Western apologists for the Khomeinist regime have already started blaming the United States for having made the mullahs nervous. The argument of the apologists is simple: Don't do anything that makes the mullahs unhappy, or else they will do more mischief.

The truth, however, is that making the mullahs nervous may be the only way of persuading them to end their defiance of the United Nations and stop trying to export Khomeinism to neighboring countries.

But there's little chance of that, unfortunately.

We simply cannot summon the courage. In the United States Left-leaning polticians are so angry at the president (and so anxious to curry favor with their base) that they are actually willing set a calendar date for when al-Qaeda and the Sunni/Shiite militias can divide up the country of Iraq after a mighty bloodbath. They would like this to happen in 2008. They even passed a bill.

And in Europe, including Britain, is possessed by cultural impotence. Multiculturalist paff and the delusions of socialism have rendered them unable to assert that Western liberal (with a little L) traditions such as freedom and democracy are a genuinely more humane ideology than the religious law and resentful Wahabi extremism that is increasingly espoused by a small minority. (Supplemental reading: This 60 Minutes interview with a former Londonistan recruiter.)

The Iranians may release the hostages tomorrow for all we know, but with this latest episode they have won confidence that the West is essentially afraid, and unwilling to respond. Just think how much easier things will be for them when the nukes are finished.