Via Kevin, I liked this sentence from the Guardian's piece on the British sailors crisis:
There is also general agreement in London and Tehran that once thecrisis had been triggered it took nearly two weeks to untangle, becausetheir release had to be agreed by all the key players in the perpetualpoker game that passes for government in Tehran.
They also say that "the decision to seize the Britons was taken locally, and was not part of a grander scheme cooked up in Tehran."
I've heard about the fragmented nature of the Iranian government from a lot of people, and how it's hard to figure out who controls what. It's one of the things that makes me optimistic about the possibility of peaceful movements towards a more liberal and democratic Iran. A subtle and careful American foreign policy might be able to take advantage of internal divisions to promote liberal reforms. This is a lot less likely to happen as long as the various factions feel a need to unite against an external threat.
