Since the recent news emerged on Friday of 15 British Navy and Royal Marine personnel being taken at gunpoint by Iranian Revolutionary Guard patrol boats ( some reports suggest Quds special force operators where also involved ).

Given that recently there have been reports of capture or possibly defection of senior Quds force commanders in Iraq. It would make sense for Iran to try and gain some sort of bargaining tool to get these valuable intelligence assets back.

On the 11th Jan US forces raided and arrested several people in the Iranian liaison office in Irbil, Iraq. According to some sources one of the men in custody is Quds Force’s director of operations!

On the 20th Jan, probably one of the most audacious raids by insurgents in over four years was made on the Karbala provincial headquarters in Iraq. Was this a failed operation to take American hostages?

Are we really to believe the surprise shown by Tony Blair when this occured on Friday, given that stories have been around for a while telling us exactly what Iran is intending to do in retaliation for the abduction of it’s personnel.

This stinks. It reminds me a little of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident which some say gave the USA a legitamate reason for direct intervention in the Vietnam War. Although they had been carrying out clandestine missions for several years before this throughout Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Just thought I’d put in my two penneth! :-) There’s alot more to this, but these snippets should help nudge any inquiring minds that may like to investigate further….

Not really mobile or geeky but fairly important to anybody that’s getting a little sick of what the UK government is doing at the moment! For the first time in my life I really don’t feel I want to live here any more…

Added : Since we can quite often learn a lot from history, may be we can learn from the sequence of events that occured when US hostages were taken from the US embassy in Iran in November 1979. At the time it’s understood that Khomeini intended it to be a short affair, but due to the weak response from Jimmy Carter this turned into a crisis lasting 444 days!

It’s also worth noting that The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was “one of the central players in the group that seized the embassy and held hostages back in 1979.