[Financial Times-UK] John Bolton - In seizing the 15 British hostages, Iran probed and found weakness. Now President Ahmadinejad can undertake equal or greater provocations, confident he need not fear a strong response. Indisputably the winners in Iran were the hardliners. It was Ahmadinejad who stood in the international spotlight for hours on end, who awarded medals to the Revolutionary Guards who captured the hostages, who announced the hostages' release and accepted their thanks. The question is, who increased relative to others in the Iranian calculus of power? The evidence unmistakably points to Ahmadinejad. If strengthening his hand within the Tehran leadership amounts to success for British diplomacy and Iranian moderates, one hesitates to ask what would constitute failure. The writer is former U.S. Ambassador to the UN and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
2007-04-10 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive