{"id":216492,"date":"2016-01-15T15:07:53","date_gmt":"2016-01-15T15:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=216492"},"modified":"2016-01-15T15:07:53","modified_gmt":"2016-01-15T15:07:53","slug":"us-iran-step-back-brink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/us-iran-step-back-brink\/","title":{"rendered":"US, Iran Step Back From the Brink"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>To awaken Thursday to front-page photos of U.S. sailors kneeling on the deck<br \/>\nof their patrol boat, hands on their heads in postures of surrender, on Iran\u2019s<br \/>\nFarsi Island, brought back old and bad memories.<\/p>\n<p>In January 1968, LBJ\u2019s last year, 82 sailors of the Pueblo were captured by<br \/>\nNorth Korea and held hostage with Captain Lloyd &#8220;Pete&#8221; Bucher, and<br \/>\nabused and tortured for a year before release.<\/p>\n<p>In the final 444 days of the Carter presidency, 52 Americans were held hostage<br \/>\nin Tehran, and released only when Ronald Reagan raised his hand to take the<br \/>\noath.<\/p>\n<p>In 2001, under George W. Bush, an EP-3 with 24 crew members was crashed by<br \/>\na Chinese fighter and forced to land on Hainan Island, where they were held<br \/>\nfor 11 days until we expressed &#8220;sorrow.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Compared to these hostage-takings, the Farsi Island incident does not seem<br \/>\nserious. Its resolution within hours by Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign<br \/>\nMinister Mohammad Javad Zarif suggests that Iran wants nothing to halt implementation,<br \/>\njust days away, of the nuclear deal that will release $100 billion in frozen<br \/>\nassets.<\/p>\n<p>Facilitating the sailors\u2019 release was a taped admission by one, identified<br \/>\nas the &#8220;commander,&#8221; who called Iran\u2019s treatment of the sailors &#8220;fantastic,&#8221;<br \/>\nand said the intrusion into Iranian waters &#8220;was a mistake. That was our<br \/>\nfault. And we apologize for our mistake.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Still, what the reactions to this incident reveal is that not only is the United<br \/>\nStates dealing with a divided regime and nation in Iran, the U.S. is itself<br \/>\ndivided on what course to pursue with Iran.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/original.antiwar.com\/buchanan\/2016\/01\/14\/us-iran-step-back-from-the-brink\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To awaken Thursday to front-page photos of U.S. sailors kneeling on the deck of their patrol boat, hands on their heads in postures of surrender, on Iran\u2019s Farsi Island, brought back old and bad memories. In January 1968, LBJ\u2019s last year, 82 sailors of the Pueblo were captured by North Korea and held hostage with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-216492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire","7":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}