We may not find out for a while. But if it’s true that she’s going to be released, you can be quite sure that somebody paid something to ransom her out. The only question is how high the price was.
There will be those who say that it was simply a friendly gesture by the mullahs, a sort of humanitarian response to our calls for “dialogue.” But that is not the way the Islamic Republic of Iran does business. They are of the “no tickee, no shirtee” school.
Just remember that back in the eighties, many American and Iranian officials and a variety of intermediaries held secret negotiations and made secret deals. The world at large did not know anything about it for more than two years.
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13 Comments
1. David W. Lincoln:The most dangerous foe is what Mortimer Adler warned against, namely the liberties taken by the likes of the Lion of Columbia. The “Sons of Allah”, to use the term coined by Orianna Fallaci, also contribute to man’s inhumanity to man, but they are the apprentices to those warriors who eschew the best of the west.
All of us get to live with the tunnel vision of those with more power than the average person.
May 11, 2009 - 9:39 am 2. Professor Guvinoff:As Isaac Newton explained, if there is an arm-twistee, there must also be an arm-twistor of equal and opposite torque somewhere. Since the lady was jailed for no compelling reason, I would say Teheran was the twistor, and Obama was the twistee. What did he give away do stop the torture? Was he able to inject them with anti-torture medecine?
Expect that memo to stay classified for a while… Anyway, we know who is footing the bill.
May 11, 2009 - 12:50 pm 3. Ira Zad:NYT just ran 2 articles on “Why Iran Releases Saberi?”–both articles are of dead-wrong category. Read them here:http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/why-iran-freed-roxana-saberi/#comment-73709
And my comment to the 2 article opinions which most likely will never be approved in Al-NYT moderation to be printed actually. Especially when I called robin Wright what she deserves to be called. Anyway if my comment is already deleted at NYT site, here it is:
None of the two analyses above are true. Especially the one from Ms. Robin Islamist-Appeaser Wright!!
Iran regime knew exactly what it was doing, as in every hostage taking case before this one. This is a hostage-taking fundamentalist islamo-Fascist regime which first arrests innocent journalists like Saberi on false charges, has a Kangaroo court to convict them of espionage, sentences them harshly; only to release them later and come out smelling like a rose.
It is a fraudulent PR tactic that this man-eating regime uses to fool international opinion into thinking that they are a kind and gentle regime.
Bull crap!
May 11, 2009 - 12:53 pm 4. Professor Guvinoff:#3 Ira Zad.
It’s quite revealing that the NYT deleted your comments. Something not fitting their perspective is happening, and they remove any trace of it!
If it was necessary to choose between the press reporting all angles and the military watching all the radar screens, I would opt for the latter, but why can’t we have both?
“La Pravda” means “the truth” in Russian. Maybe that’s the way they want to have it?
The commentary on Pajamas Media is more useful than whatever is left of the NYT.
May 11, 2009 - 2:52 pm 5. Kevin Griggs:It was all planned out this way from the get-go.
May 11, 2009 - 6:42 pm 6. Observer:Jail her.
Put her on trial and sentence her to prison.
File an appeal.
Let her go.
This way they seem like good people doing whats right.
Ira Zad’s comment was not deleted on the NY Times blog since I just read it – paranoid people! However, it’s a simplistic view, and no, they don’t come out smelling like a rose. If anything, it highlighted the number of their own journalists they are holding in prison. They have also had other internal disagreements about legal cases recently, most notably a young Iranian girl executed for an alleged crime when she was minor (by our standards).
Saberi’s parents hired a new lawyer and who knows what deal he made with them. They probably had little or no evidence to make it such a big affair. It’s not the first time they’ve had an encounter with Saberi – they did in 2006 regarding her journalist credentials.
It’s silly for people who don’t really know what’s going on to make all sorts of conjectures.
May 11, 2009 - 7:03 pm 7. Michael Lonie:Pravda actually means “reveled truth” in Russian, a religious truth. In Communist times it meant the “truth” as the Party dictated it. Homely, ordinary truths are “Istina”. I seem to recall reading that Lenin once rebuked a colleague for pointing out some bit of reality that got in the way of one of Lenin’s crackpot policies: “Don’t bother me with a mass of petty istinas.”
May 11, 2009 - 8:47 pm 8. winston:Regime papers reported that Vali Nasr (regime’s loyal agent in US) has helped secure her release and has also conveyed a message from senior Dems to the regime.
May 12, 2009 - 8:46 am 9. Ira Zad:Winston — Ditto on that -Vali Nasr is a regime operative who is close to Obama administration– His father is an Islamist professor in UK–They are using Vali Nasr to do their appeasement negotiations for them.
The link of the report(in Farsi) as reported by Iranpressnews.com which quotes the regime site “HamMeehan” website is here: http://www.iranpressnews.com/source/058880.htm
May 12, 2009 - 9:42 am 10. B Hussein Obama:Dr Ledeen should be aware that a “Roxana”, which is a female, is worth less than a camel.
May 12, 2009 - 2:49 pm 11. winston:Ira Zad, Vali Nasr was also seen going in and out of the Bush’s White House between 2006 to 2008. He goes to bed with any one to buy time for his masters in Tehran for sure.
May 12, 2009 - 3:37 pm 12. Ira Zad:Winston– I know! Well, Vali Nasr is a regime operative in US, and has long family tradition ties with the old traditionalist British political elite who are pro-Islamist and pro-mullah, so we can’t expect much mor eout of Vali Nasr than just be a good ‘plant’ and do his job as the ‘mule’ in the treason to his birth country Iran.
But, what’s more disappointing above all else is G.W.Bush and his mullah appeasement team, co-appeasers Condi mullah-lover Rice, and Bob ‘Chicken’ Gates who is still singing the same lullaby when it comes to the mullahs even today.
Bush lost a historic opportunity to change the regime in Iran due to his weakness and feebleness in his second term.
VP Cheney was brushed aside and instead Rice and gates took the Iran lever and subdued Bush into submission.
But history will only blame Bush himself for not acting on Iran when he could.
May 13, 2009 - 9:05 am 13. Pat J:Leeden should know a lot about Iran. He was knee deep in the Iran-Contra scandal.
May 15, 2009 - 1:05 pm