Iran's new hostage crisis

Let me give you my prediction about where the latest Iran hostage crisis will go in the next few days.

Unless the British and their allies take some forceful action to recover 15 sailors captured while on patrol in Iraqi waters, or make the mullah government pay a severe price for this act of war, this hostage situation will escalate.

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The Iranians want to negotiate. Talking gives them power, stature, prestige. Bargaining must be avoided at all costs.

What an opportune moment the Iranians have provided for a strike on their nuclear facilities, if such a strike can be successful.

It's time for Tony Blair to go dark – to stop talking about stepping up the pressure on Tehran. It's time for action. It's time to show the Iranians that Britain, Europe, NATO, America and the Western world are not just paper tigers.

Unfortunately, we've been acting like paper tigers.

Think of how these sailors got captured – without a fight! It's one thing when civilian contractors are abducted. It's one thing when outnumbered troops surrender in battle. It's another thing when the rules of engagement prevent sailors and soldiers in a war zone from fighting back at all.

It is that kind of stupidity by appeasement-minded political leaders that will lose this war and bring it home to our own streets, our own waterways, our own cities.

Armed troops and sailors should be trained to fight and ordered to fight. Surrender is a last option, not a first.

Those ridiculous rules of non-engagement must end immediately – for the British, for the Americans and for all our allies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But based on what I have seen over the last few days, here's what I predict Iran will do next.

You will notice Tehran has called on the British to admit their forces violated Iranian waters as a precondition for the release of the sailors.

Whether the Brits capitulate or not, at some point in this standoff – if it continues much longer – you will see Iran up the ante. You will witness the mullah regime demand Britain's withdrawal from Iraq as a requirement for freeing the 15 sailors.

That extortion threat is not far off.

We have already seen captured sailor Faye Turney plead for her government to pull out of the Middle East. I'm sure those words were whispered in her ear by her captors. That's what the enemy wants. That's what this incident is all about. The attack on the British patrol boat was a deliberate provocation – an effort to appeal to a British public that just doesn't understand the stakes of this fight.

Iran is going to add the new demand soon. The longer the drama continues without actions, only words, from Britain, the more likely that scenario becomes.

Iran is giddy at this moment that there has been no price to pay for abducting 15 members of the royal navy. The leadership there is more persuaded each day that the West fears them. They are more convinced each moment that the West is impotent. They believe – and maybe they are right – that the West will do nothing to jeopardize the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf.

The more this crisis lingers, the more they think they are in the driver's seat.

Sending aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf is not going to free the sailors. Passing resolutions in the United Nations is not going to turn Iran into a benign nation in the region. Talking tough at 10 Downing Street is not going to get the job done, achieve victory in the Middle East and reduce the threat we all face from Islamo-fascist mass murderers.

We need a battle plan for victory, not hand-wringing about how awful the bad guys are.

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