Finally Roxana Saben has been released from an Iranian prison and returned home among much publicity. I’m not sure what all the politics were that were involved in this, but I’m glad she’s not any longer in danger in an Islamic rogue state.
Are all Islamic states rogue? Decidedly not: Egypt and Jordan are two that, to me, clearly aren’t. I will not dispute thta the Islamioc Republic of Iran is. But I think it helpful to realize how they got that way.
In World War II, Iran was sympathetic to the Axis powers, as wee most of the middle east countries. However, they had oil that the Russians wanted,and we wanted them to have. Further, we didn’t want the Axis, particular the Germans, to have it. What to do such a situation? Why, occupy them of course and support an oppressive regime, in this case that of Shah Pahlvi, to keep the people in line. It is not clear to me why humankind and the Western posers, in particular the US, have never realized that doing so has its consequences. Eventually, the people revolted, threw out the Shah and became an Islamic republic, which, for very understandable reasons, was anti-American, anti-Russian and, for reasons not as clear, anti-Israeli.
As a general rule, I am not as sympathetic with victims that intentionally put themselves in harms way as I am with others. For example, when people follow hooligan teenagers instead of calling the police and just leaving them alone, then if they are harmed by the hooligans, they have contributed to their own harm. Now, I am not saying that Roxana should have not visited Iran: she likely had good reason to do so. And I don’t think she was a spy. Not because she couldn’t have been, but because I don’t see what she could have contributed to our intelligence on Iran. As a sidelight, missionaries and peace corps workers are very suspect when it comes to the espionage game. But she did, once in Iran, visit Israel. Rogue nation or not, the middle eastern Islamic nations, except for Egypt and Jordan, take a dim view of people entering, or re-entering, their country with an Israeli visa in their passport. Often, they don’t survive the experience.
So we are all glad that Roxana made it home safely. It could have been a lot worse