Looking back on the Iran-Britain hostage crisis
After the Iranian Revolutionary Guards took 15 British soldiers captive in the Persian Gulf on March 23, new worries emerged that it would lead to new fighting in the region. As it was the possibility of a serious clash between the US and Iran was already being discussed and, after the capture of the 15 British soldiers, a third US air carrier was moved to the Gulf. Was the capture of those 15 British soldiers going to be like the definitive Gulf of Tonkin episode, which wound up pulling the US into the Vietnam War, except this time would it signal the start of serious clashes between the US and Iran? After around 12 days of anxious waiting we were able to breathe a sigh of relief when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided to free the 15 soldiers on April 4, in honor of, as he noted, the Prophet Mohammed’s birthday and Easter. Now we can look back and ask ourselves what actually happened. The first thing to come to mind right after the capture of the 15 soldiers was the arres