[Washington Post] Robin Wright - In the end, Iran recognized that the crisis was beginning to exact a cost, as it came under pressure even from allies and other Islamic countries, officials and experts said. Even Syria urged Iran to release the Britons, Syrian and U.S. sources said. "They are so consumed with short-term issues - how to undermine the West and how to gain leverage - at the expense of long-term strategy. They have undermined themselves," said Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "In the long term, it undermines their ability to attract foreign investment and have good relations" with the outside world. Tehran was also unable to rally significant public support for a showdown. "There was no nationalist bounce out of this," said Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "All the usual people you'd expect to be frothing at the mouth simply weren't."
2007-04-05 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive