Bloggers in Iran see government folly in kidnapping Brits

Times:

Iran’s outspoken bloggers are deeply critical of the way that Tehran is handling the crisis over the captured Britons.

The views expressed by many online diarists are in stark contrast to those of hardline students shown protesting violently outside the British Embassy and baying for the British “aggressors” to be executed for spying.

“I cannot believe these guys in the Iranian administration! What are they trying to achieve keeping these guys?” wrote “Mr Behi”, a popular 29-year-old blogger who usually writes about cosy, domestic issues and his life as a happily married man in Tehran.

Like many bloggers writing from inside Iran, he uses an assumed name for his own safety. “Iran is afraid. It is cornered politically and militarily,” he wrote, suspecting that the decision to capture the Britons was a “panic reaction”.

Mr Behi (http://mrbehi.blogs.com) informed the West: “This [Iranian] administration is not very rational. Don’t poke it like this.”

He also urged his own Government not to goad the British and American forces in neighbouring Iraq and the region.

“These guys who are surrounding us are not that rational either. Do not poke them like this,” he wrote.

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The capture of the Britons proved “Iran does not care about its public image and does not know how to gain the support of the international community”, wrote another Tehran blogger (http://view-fromiran.blogspot.com).

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The parading of the British captives on Iranian television was dismissed by “Under Underground” as “an old trick that no more anybody in Iran is fooled by” (http://yaserb.blogs-pot.com).

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There is more.

Freedom of speech seems to have found a few cracks in the web of suppression imposed by the Ahmadinejad regime and the Ayatollahs. The government would be wise to take their advise, but the chances of that are remote.