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’s
Farsi Island, brought back old and bad memories.
In January 1968, LBJ’s last year, 82 sailors of the Pueblo were captured by
North Korea and held hostage with Captain Lloyd “Pete” Bucher, and
abused and tortured for a year before release.
In the final 444 days of the Carter presidency, 52 Americans were held hostage
in Tehran, and released only when Ronald Reagan raised his hand to take the
oath.
In 2001, under George W. Bush, an EP-3 with 24 crew members was crashed by
a Chinese fighter and forced to land on Hainan Island, where they were held
for 11 days until we expressed “sorrow.”
Compared to these hostage-takings, the Farsi Island incident does not seem
serious. Its resolution within hours by Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign
Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif suggests that Iran wants nothing to halt implementation,
just days away, of the nuclear deal that will release $100 billion in frozen
assets.
Facilitating the sailors’ release was a taped admission by one, identified
as the “commander,” who called Iran’s treatment of the sailors “fantastic,”
and said the intrusion into Iranian waters “was a mistake. That was our
fault. And we apologize for our mistake.”
Still, what the reactions to this incident reveal is that not only is the United
States dealing with a divided regime and nation in Iran, the U.S. is itself
divided on what course to pursue with Iran.