Reply #13: If the British sailors' ploy, back in March 07, is any guide, the Iranians will give the pilot

[Peace Patriot]

a nice dinner, a shower, a shave, dry clean his uniform, pat him on the back, say, "Nice try!," and put him back in his plane and send him on his way.

They are not fools. And they DO. NOT. WANT. WAR. WITH. THE. UNITED STATES.

They may be messing around a bit in their own sphere of influence, and who can blame them? They've got the entire U.S. military on their border, and surrounding them, and a major disaster of a country, Iraq, as their immediate neighbor. (If China somehow invaded Mexico, would we not be messing around in our sphere of influence--spying, strengthening our defenses, maybe providing arms to Mexican resisters, etc.?) But they have invaded no one, have harmed no one (or very little harm, compared to the U.S.-Bush), appear to have no territorial ambitions, and happen to be one of the potentially most progressive societies in the Middle East. They are not Arabs--and have considerable resentment of the Arab incursions into Persian culture. And they are not particularly jihadist. There was not a single Iranian in the group of supposed 9/11 attackers, who were mostly from Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

I think they will return this pilot and his plane, peacefully--with no grand-standing or efforts at humiliation. They will try to turn it into a moment of peace and good will, as they did with the British sailors. They don't want war--they want commerce. Almost everything they've done, so far, has been defensive. They are afraid of a U.S. attack (or an attack by Israel). They won't likely provoke one.

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I just caught the comment above about the 5 generals--that more is involved than one pilot and a spy plane. I still think the Iranians will react sensibly. They are certainly aware of the political situation here, and the peril they are in. They will do everything they can to make themselves look good in this situation--non-warmongering, non-aggressive. The situation is humiliating enough for the U.S. military, all by itself. The Iranians will be magnanimous.

And, hell, with 5 generals on board, maybe they can negotiate a U.S./Iran peace treaty with these guys, and have the 5 generals take it back to Bush.

The U.S. military is largely opposed to attacking Iran. Who knows? Maybe these generals did it on purpose. What were 5 U.S. generals doing in a plane that was violating Iranian airspace? They lose their way?