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Whenever the West has problems with a particular country, they start playing on the harp of divisions within the country, using questions like this one. Differences clearly exist in Iran between the president and the supreme leader as well as within Iranian society, just as there are always problems between the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department in the U.S.
The pardon of the sailors shows that neither Iran nor the United Kingdom live on an island. This decision came after news that an Iranian diplomat was released unexpectedly in Iraq!!!
I think the situation in Iraq will eventually be resolved by Iraqis, but the presence of Americans will delay any serious attempts at a solution. The exit of American troops might cause a temporary rise in violence but it would not be sustained, because withdrawal would remove the strongest and most immediate argument for armed opposition.
The case of Alan Johnston has nothing to do with his neutrality but with the lawlessness in Gaza. I was on a delegation from the International Press Institute that visited Ramallah and we spoke to many authorities including Hamas ministers (at the time) and President Abbas. They were all against his abduction; no one mentioned his professional work except in praise of it.
Funny how so many of the questions posed in this forum are Western-centric. The bombs in London make me no less and no more safe where I live.
Last spring, Gazi Hamad, the spokesman for the then Palestinian Prime Minsiter Ismail Haniyeh, wrote a very courageous article in the local Palestinian daily Al Quds. In the article, Hamad criticized a phenomenon he felt was prevailing among Gazan Palestinians. He said that people are trying to solve every conflict, small or big, political or social, by using violence. He complained that people no longer consider civil forms of dealing with conflict, as everyone tries to find a shortcut to solve their problems. Hamad didn't know at the time that hard-line branches of his own Hamas movement would in a few months do just that: try to resolve a conflict with the Fatah security personnel by means of brute force.
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