Richard Miniter and a US Army explosives expert discuss weapons of Iranian origin captured in Iraq on a PJM-exclusive 12:15 video.

Depkafile reports:

The US Pentagon states that the senior al Qaeda operative was captured by the CIA at an undisclosed location while attempting to reach his native Iraq after meeting al Qaeda operatives in Iran. DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources say this disclosure points to four significant developments:

1. Iran is again providing al Qaeda members with a path to Iraq from Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2002, the Islamic Republic afforded defeated al Qaeda groups an escape route from Afghanistan.

2. Iran is allowing al Qaeda terrorists operating in Iraq to strike from within its borders. Evidence of this, if confirmed by al Hadi ,would further exacerbate the military tensions between Washington and Tehran.

3. DEBKAfile’s sources surmise that he was picked up crossing the Iranian border into Iraq.

4. Word is awaited to clarify if the CIA’s capture of al Hadi’s capture was a fluke or the result of a tip-off by an Iraqi informant, whether in Kurdistan or from inside Iran.

Depkafile reports a that high-ranking Syrian delegation of 40 generals is currently visiting Tehran, clearly conferring about further forms of Syrian-Iranian military cooperation.

Led by Maj. Gen. Yahya L. Solayman, War Planning chief at the Syrian armed forces General Staff, the delegation represents all branches of the Syrian armed forces. On their arrival on April 18, the Syrian officers went straight into conference with Iranian defense minister Brig. Gen. Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar, Revolutionary Commanders chief Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim-Safavi and dep. chief of staff Maj. Gen. Hassani Sa’di, who is Iran’s chief of military war preparations. The Syrian visitors were taken around RG and armed forces training installations and given a display of the latest Iranian weapons systems, including stealth missiles, electronic warfare appliances and undersea missiles and torpedoes. They also visited the big Imam Ali training base in N. Tehran, where hundreds of Lebanese Hizballah and Palestinian Hamas and Jihad Islami terrorists are taking courses.

In Washington and Jerusalem, there is little doubt that the two allies timed the Syrian delegation’s mission to Tehran as a rejoinder to US defense secretary Robert Gates’ Middle East tour last week.

Israel sees four causes for concern:

1. The unusually large size of the Syrian delegation and the presence of operations officers from the various army corps.

2. The elevated positions of the Iranian officials hosting the Syrians: the top men with responsibility for preparing the RGs and armed forces for armed conflict.

US and Israeli intelligence experts agreed in their talks during Gates’ two-day visit to Israel last week on the object of the Syrian mission: to tighten operational coordination at the highest level between the Syria military and Iran’s armed forces and Revolutionary Guards.

3. The installations and weapons shown the Syrian officers. The intelligence estimate is that they saw the weapons systems soon to be consigned by Iran to the Syrian army and Hizballah, as well as the types of assistance pledged for Syria in the event of a military showdown with the United States or Israel. Syrian-Iranian consultations must also be presumed to have cleared the routes by which these weapons would reach Syria and Hizballah in a military contingency.

During the 2006 Hizballah-Israel war, Iran ran an airlift to Damascus through Turkish airspace and over the Mediterranean.

4. The unusual length of the visit. Monday, April 23 the Syrian officers were still busy in Tehran after six days and showed no sign of leaving.

John McCain has been making serious movements in a rightward direction recently, speaking out against gun control, urging America to stay the course in Iraq. (You might almost think he was running for president, or something.)

This little vignette at the Murrells Inlet, South Carolina VFW Hall was downright endearing. The moonbats were wetting their beds over at Daily Kos over it: Splash1, Splash2, Splash3.

0:42 video

That Kos-linked video is being flooded with attention, and isn’t loading in a timely fashion. Here’s the same thing at an alternative link.

Here’s the complete version (on a leftwing site, but I enjoyed it anyway).

James Lileks reports surprising evidence of vertebrate life in Europe.

As surveys go, its results were rather surprising: A majority of Europeans would support deterring Iran’s nuclear program by military force. It’s not quite as drastic as Quakers demanding plowshares be converted to swords, but it’s close.

We’re not looking at a large, clamorous, martial majority, though — 52 percent approved of military action. Eight percent had no opinion, possibly because they were busy packing for the state-mandated three-month vacation and didn’t want to be bothered.

Forty percent disagreed that Iran should be deterred by military means, and frankly, that seems low. The European spirit, bled white by two ghastly, self-inflicted bloodbaths, has settled into the warm, milky bath of passive decline. One gets the sense that most Europeans would disapprove of military action to fight off alien invaders. Hey, everyone has a colonial phase. Who are we to point fingers, let alone guns?

Read the whole thing.

The poll was conducted by the think tank Open Europe.

And was reported here, in Macedonia. Somehow I missed reading about this one in the Times or Post.

Mark Steyn suggests that the defense of Britain might well be better handled by its football fans than by its government.

Watching Tottenham Hotspur fans taking on the Spanish constabulary at a European soccer match the other night, I found myself idly speculating on what might have happened had those Iranian kidnappers made the mistake of seizing 15 hard-boiled football yobs who hadn’t got the Blair memo about not escalating the situation.

Instead, as we know, the mullahs were fortunate enough to take hostage 15 Royal Navy sailors and Royal Marines. Which were which was hard to say upon their release. The Queen’s Navee had been demobbed. The token gal was dressed up as an Islamic woman and the 14 men had been kitted out in Ahmadinejad leisurewear. Which is not just a ghastly fashion faux pas but a breach of the increasingly one-way Geneva Conventions. But they smiled and they waved. Wave, Britannia! Britannia, waive the rules! …

The Associated Press reported the story as follows: ”Analysis: Hope For More Iran Compromises.”

Well, if by ”compromise” you mean Tehran didn’t put them up for a show trial and behead them, you might have a point. With this encouraging development, we might persuade them to wipe only half of Israel off the map, or even nuke some sparsely occupied corner of the Yukon instead. With the momentum of this “compromise” driving events, all manner of diplomatic triumphs are possible.

Tony Blair was at pains to point out that the hostages were released ”without any deal, without any negotiation, without any side agreement of any nature.” But he’s missing (or artfully sidestepping) the point: Tehran didn’t want a deal. It wanted the humbling of the Great Satan’s principal ally. And it got it. Very easily. And it paid no price for it. And it has tested in useful ways the empty pretensions of the U.N., the EU and also NATO, whose second largest fleet is now a laughingstock in a part of the world where it helps to be taken seriously. …

Even if there is more going on than meets the eye, what meets the eye is so profoundly damaging to the credibility of great nations that no amount of lethal special ops could compensate for it. Power is only as great as the perception of power. The Iranians understand that they can’t beat America or Britain in tank battles or air strikes so they choose other battlefields on which to hit them. That’s why the behavior of the captives gives great cause for concern: There’s no point training guys to be tough fighting men of the Royal Marines when you’re in a bloody little scrap in Sierra Leone (as they were a couple of years ago) if you allow them to crumple on TV in front of the entire world.

So in 2007 the men of the Royal Navy can be kidnapped and “the strong arm of England” (in Lord Palmerston’s phrase) goes all limp-wristed and threatens to go to the U.N. and talk about drafting a Security Council resolution. Backstage, meanwhile, deals are done: An Iranian “diplomat” (a k a Mister Terror Kingpin) suddenly resurfaces in Tehran after having been reported in American detention, his release purely coincidental, we’re told. But it’s the kind of coincidence that ensures more of your men will be kidnapped and ransomed in the years ahead. And, just to remind the world who makes the rules, six more British subjects were killed in southern Iraq even at the moment of the hostages’ release. The Iranians have exposed America’s strongest ally as the soft underbelly of the Great Satan.

The most noticeable feature of the last two weeks has been the massive shrug by the British public. Some observers attributed this to the unpopularity of the Iraq war: Those nice mullahs wouldn’t be pulling this stuff if Blair hadn’t got mixed up with that crazy Texas moron. But it seems to me a more profound malaise has gripped them — the enervating fatalism of too many people in what is still a semi-serious nation with one of the world’s biggest militaries up against an insignificant basket-case …Looking at the reaction to this incident by the United States, European Union, United Nations et al., Iran will conclude that the transnational consensus will never muster the will to constrain its nuclear ambitions.

Europeans and more and more Americans believe they can live in a world with all the benefits of global prosperity and none of the messy obligations necessary to maintain it. And so they cruise around war zones like floating NGOs. Iran called their bluff, and televised it to the world. In the end, every great power is as great as its credibility, and the only consolation after these last two weeks is that Britain doesn’t have much more left to lose.

Read the whole thing.

The Telegraph reports:

Hardliners in the Iranian regime have warned that the seizure of British naval personnel demonstrates that they can make trouble for the West whenever they want to and do so with impunity.

The bullish reaction from Teheran will reinforce the fears of western diplomats and military officials that more kidnap attempts may be planned.

The British handling of the crisis has been regarded with some concern in Washington, and a Pentagon defence official told The Sunday Telegraph: “The fear now is that this could be the first of many. If the Brits don’t change their rules of engagement, the Iranians could take more hostages almost at will.

“Iran has come out of this looking reasonable. If I were the Iranians, I would keep playing the same game. They have very successfully muddied the waters and bought themselves some more time. And in parts of the Middle East they will be seen as the good guys. They could do it time and again if they wanted to.”

Americans also expressed dismay that the British had suspended boarding operations in the Gulf while its tactics are reassessed.

“Iran has got what it wants. They have secured free passage for smuggling weapons into Iraq without a fight,” one US defence department official said.

It is also clear that the Iranian government believes that the outcome has strengthened its position over such contentious issues as its nuclear programme. Hardliners within the regime have been lining up to crow about Britain’s humiliation, and indicated that the operation was planned.

Iran’s ability to humiliate the West, recover captured agents provocateur, and break Western blockades at will, simply by repeating its well-known tactic of hostage-taking is good news for the hard-liners in Iran. But not everything is black, those British naval personnel hostages will all be permitted to sell their stories to the media and make a bundle.

The New York Sun reports:

American and Iraqi officials are working out a plan to allow Iranian diplomats access to five Iranians captured in Iraq in January by American forces as a possible prelude to their release.

The plan dovetails with Secretary of State Rice’s announcement that she would be open to direct talks with the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, this month at a scheduled meeting in Baghdad of officials from Iraq and neighboring countries. It also follows the release of 15 British sailors captured by Iran last month, an arrangement both America and Britain have insisted did not yield concessions from the West.

Despite their assurances, contradictory details are emerging. Yesterday, a spokesman for the National Security Council, Gordon Johndroe, told reporters that America is negotiating a process with the Iraqi government that could lead to the release of the five Iranians, captured in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil by American forces on the morning of January 11, hours after President Bush announced a new Iraq strategy to combat the Iranian and Syrian networks in Iraq.

“Well, that’s an ongoing process,” Mr. Johndroe said. “We’re going to work that with the Iraqis to see what the next steps are, determining what course of justice should be carried out to deal with — to deal with, frankly, what we believe were activities harmful to innocent Iraqis, as well as coalition forces.”

Also, as The New York Sun reported yesterday, the White House took part in the decision this week to release the second secretary of the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, Jalal Sharafi, who was being held in an Iraqi- and American-administered facility. Mr. Sharafi arrived in Iran on Tuesday, the day before President Ahmadinejad said he would release the 15 British sailors. …

the five Iranians in American custody are particularly dangerous. The administration official described them as “paymasters” and “terrorism coaches.”

Watch for face-saving temporizing, then a transfer of the Irbil five to “Iraqi custody,” followed promptly by their release.

Is it any wonder that representatives of old-fashioned cultures in the Middle East which prize honor despise the governments of Western democracies?

NY Post:

England expects that every man will do his duty,” said Admiral Lord Nelson off Cape Trafalgar in October 1805. …

We strain to imagine what the old sea dog would have made of that sorry gaggle of British sailors and Marines – waving and smiling, decked out in cheesy duds and clutching swagbags stuffed with goodies from the mullahs: books, candies, pistachio nuts and even a bud vase or two.

How sweet.

Which is probably the best that can be said of their 13 days in Iranian custody. If there has ever in history been a faster, more humiliating submission to Stockholm Syndrome, we’re unaware of it.

No doubt, being plucked out of one’s rubber raft at gunpoint and passed into an Iranian captivity of uncertain duration was a harrowing experience.

But aren’t British service personnel trained for this sort of thing?

Well, actually, that’s a secret.

“We’re not releasing the details of the training any of the services go through under those conditions,” said a Defense Ministry spokesman, “because if we do that, then it would make it easier to interrogate them.”

Easier than what, we wonder.

Read the whole thing.

Depkafile also yesterday revealed the terms of the probable deal.

A secret British military delegation arrives in Tehran, as Ahmadinejad pushes for an immediate military confrontation with the UK and US –April 3, 2007, 7:01 PM (GMT+02:00)

DEBKAfile’s exclusive sources continue coverage of the top-level Iranian debate on how to dispose of the 15 British captives seized on March 23.

The fierce – often strident – debate between pragmatists and radicals prompted supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who leads the first camp, to order president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who speaks for the radicals, to call off his planned news conference on Tuesday, April 3. The president had intended to unveil an important advance in the national nuclear program; he certainly did not mean to augur a breakthrough in the 12-day hostage crisis.

In the ongoing debate, the president and his radical followers seek to use the British captives to goad the British, followed by the Americans, into a limited military confrontation in the Persian Gulf. Iran would then exploit its local edge to teach the West that it is not worth their while to mess with the Islamic Republic in a full-blown war or count on trouncing it easily.

DEBKAfile’s sources in Tehran report that it is hard to predict which way the dispute will go. There were moments on Monday and Tuesday when it looked as though the Khamenei line for ending the crisis, backed also by supreme national security advisers Ali Larijani, would prevail. Larijani came out Monday night with the encouraging statement that there was no need to put the captured British sailors on trial and the crisis could be solved through bilateral diplomacy. He said a delegation might come to Tehran to review the points at issue.

Tuesday, a British military delegation did indeed arrive secretly in Tehran.

Larijani’s statement was the outcome of back-channel talks between Tehran and London, partly by videoconference, in which the British promised to de-escalate their tone and calm the situation, in return for an Iranian pledge that the captives would not be tried.

London allowed the 15 sailors to admit they had trespassed into Iranian waters, while Tehran agreed to suspend further television footage. London also offered to help work for the release of the five Revolutionary Guards al-Quds Brigade officers captured by US agents in Baghdad. One of them, second secretary at the Baghdad embassy, Jalal Sharafi, was indeed set free Tuesday.

The British even offered to obtain for Iran information on the whereabouts of the missing Iranian general Ali Reza Asgari, believed to have defected to the West in February.

Our sources add that the radical faction of the Iranian leadership is still working hard to derail the positive diplomatic track and use the crisis to bring about a military escalation in the Gulf. Ahmadinejad is supported in this by the Revolutionary Guards commander Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi and RG Navy chief, Gen. Morteza Saffar. They are stirring up public opinion to back them up in the hope of bring the supreme ruler round to their view – so far without success.

To further this campaign, the president’s followers organized Sunday’s protest at the British embassy in Tehran and had the Bassij (the RGs civilian militia) round up a student petition at Iran’s 266 universities and colleges for putting the 15 British sailors and marines on trial and executing them. This would have been a provocation that the British could not pass over without drastic action.

Spook86 also thinks that an exchange is underway.

As we predicted more than a week ago, resolution of the British hostage crisis may well hinge on the fate of those five Iranian “officials,” arrested by the U.S. military in Iraq back in January. The five were nabbed during a raid on a non-accredited Iranian diplomatic facility in Irbil, in Iraq’s Kurdistan region. Tehran insists that the officials were engaged in consular work, but military officials claim that the Iranians are linked to a military faction that provides support for terrorists in Iraq.

Today, an Iranian diplomat emphasized that release of the five would be helpful in securing freedom for 15 British military personnel, who were taken captive on 23 March. The Brits were abducted while conducting anti-smuggling operations in the Shatt al-Arab Waterway, along the Iran-Iraq border.

“We are intensively seeking the release of the five Iranians,” the Iraqi foreign ministry official said. “This will be a factor that will help in the release of the British sailors and marines.”

Tehran’s efforts to link the British hostages to its own detainees underscores the importance of that raid in Irbil, and suggests that the captured “officials” were more than mere diplomats. Since their arrrest, coalition forces have scored a number of victories against Iranian-supported terror networks, and Tehran wants to get these “consular officials” back before they can divulge more information.

And sadly, some sort of swap could be in the works. Another Iranian diplomat, captured in Baghdad two months ago, has apparently been released.

Read the whole thing.

We don’t know for sure at this point, but it certainly looks as if Blair has knuckled under to the mullahs.

Depkafile beats Reuters to the punch in the publication of its own story:

Reuters quotes Ahmadinejad as announcing forgiveness of the 15 British sailors and their freedom as a gift to Britain

April 4, 2007, 4:22 PM (GMT+02:00)

Reuters quotes Ahmadinejad as announcing forgiveness of the 15 British sailors and their freedom as a gift to Britain

This news was delivered Wednesday April 4 at the end of a two-hour speech. AP translates the announcement as the immediate release of the 15 captives at the end of the news conference. Ahmadinejad: We leave judgment in the British sailor case to world opinion and because the anniversary of the Prophet’s birth is near, we have decided to pardon them. He congratulated “the brave border guards” who arrested the British violators and awarded medals to three Iranian generals for “defending Iranian waters.” He said he was “saddened” by the UK’s violations of Iran’s territory. He accused the UN security council of not checking the facts of the case before passing a resolution.

Christopher Booke reports that Secretary of State for Health Patricia Hewitt has issued a strong condemnation of Iran’s propaganda photographs of captured British hostages.

It was deplorable that the woman hostage should be shown smoking. This sends completely the wrong message to our young people.

Hat tip to Chuck.