***UPDATE****UK Independent now reporting this as as news flash******

Getting hotter for those British sailors kidnapped by Iran:

“FIFTEEN British sailors and marines arrested by Iran‚Äôs Revolutionary Guards off the coast of Iraq may be charged with spying.

A website run by associates of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, reported last night that the Britons would be put before a court and indicted.

Referring to them as “insurgents”, the site concluded: “If it is proven that they deliberately entered Iranian territory, they will be charged with espionage. If that is proven, they can expect a very serious penalty since according to Iranian law, espionage is one of the most serious offences.”

The warning followed claims by Iranian officials that the British navy personnel had been taken to Tehran, the capital, to explain their “aggressive action” in entering Iranian waters. British officials insist the servicemen were in Iraqi waters when they were held.

The penalty for espionage in Iran is death. However, similar accusations of spying were made when eight British servicemen were detained in the same area in 2004. They were paraded blindfolded on television but did not appear in court and were freed after three nights in detention.

Iranian student groups called yesterday for the 15 detainees to be held until US forces released five Revolutionary Guards captured in Iraq earlier this year.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat, a Saudi-owned newspaper based in London, quoted an Iranian military source as saying that the aim was to trade the Royal Marines and sailors for these Guards.”

As I said on the show yesterday, Iran – like North Korea – is incapable of normal diplomacy and therefore all that much more dangerous. Subsequently this is a familiar tactic – a temper tantrum – to get what they want, in this case this has as much to do with the Sanctions that the UN voted in last night as the effort to get back their special ops people.

However, I’m a bit confused here on the number of their people Iran seeks to release. Because of the five Iranians who were captured in December during house raids, two were released – to protests by the US – several weeks later. One of those released was the third-highest-ranking official of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ al-Quds Brigade, who we know were supplying and training the Insurgency.

Yet this is all tied into to this story that began on January 20th this year when Iranian operatives, wearing our uniforms and speaking fluent english infiltrated a police station in Karbala and kidnapped five American officers whom they later executed. It’s believed that this was not the original plan, as these officers were to be the original barginning chips for the held Iranians, but instead something went wrong and within hours they were dead, shot execution style outside the city.

Consequently it is believed that Revolutionary Guards General, Ali Reza Asquari, 63, who had been identified as being in charge of the Iraining activity in Iraq, dissappeared from a hotel in Instabul on Feb 7th and after not being seen since, although reports have said that he has – according to thisreport – defected to the US. Kenneth Timmerman also covered the circumstances surrounding his disappearance.

My take is they can stop looking. Unless he surfaces somewhere it’s quite possible his influence was eliminated.

All of this of course put a damper on Iranian attempts at it’s promise to capture two American soldiers as they would be unwilling to suffer the price that would be inevitably extracted. Subsequently they have gone the ‘lesser’ route with the British sailors seeking less of a retaliatory effect, which means they don’t know squat about the Brits.

UPDATE: PJM has an exclusive that the US has about 300 Iranian ops captured over the last few months. Richard Minter is reporting this giving me no reason to doubt the sources.

iraq iran