The hostages

It appears that the regime of the Iranian mullahs may end the way it began -- with a hostage crisis (though targeting British sailors rather than American diplomats). Timothy Garton Ash notes the revealing lack of serious EU action in solidarity with Britain here (The Guardian is a hard-left-wing newspaper, which probably accounts for the overwhelmingly negative slant of the reader comments); Gerard Baker compares the crisis with the Falklands war here, making some interesting points about the behavior of American and British conservatives at that time; Austin Bay points out here that the regime is playing with fire.

Matters may come to a head very soon.