NewsMax thinks that Iran's mysterious decision to suddenly release the fifteen British hostages was due in large measure to the fact that the U.S.S. Nimitz carrier battle group was steaming toward the Persian Gulf. The Nimitz will soon be the third carrier battle group in the region and this fact, NewsMax believes, served to concentrate the more practical minds among the Iranian elite.
Possibly. The last thing the less fanatic Iranian leaders want to do is to provoke the United States while George Bush is still president. There will be time for provocations after 2008, especially if the Democrats win the election, but Bush, they've probably concluded, is not a man to trifle with.
The Iranians have learned this lesson afresh in recent weeks. Their revolutionary guards exported deadly IEDs into Iraq and suddenly their operatives were being killed and arrested in Iraqi towns, and top echelon people around the world started to disappear off the face of the earth. Bush has taught the Iranians that there are ways to play hardball short of open war and if the Iranians are intent on playing the game they've found that two can play it.
Better for them, the mullahs may have decided, to wait until Bush is out of office before they push hard against the U.S.
An alternative explanation being floated by some is that Nancy Pelosi persuaded Bashir Assad of Syria to persuade Ayatollah Khameini of Iran to release the hostages.
Perhaps. Or perhaps all the Islamist extremists in Tehran have converted to Buddhism and now want only peace, enlightenment and the seven fold path.
RLC