Obama’s Fishing Boat Diplomacy

It all happened pretty fast, but I’m sure the President had a say in how this rescue of Iranian fishermen would go down. With astute diplomatic sensitivity, the Navy first captured Somali pirates on January 6, 2012, as they attempted to board a freighter ship. They fed the pirates and released them knowing they could not get to shore in their small skiff, and must be deploying from another larger boat in the area. They tracked the priates from a distance. The boat they went back to turned out to be an Iranian fishing boat, flying the Iranian flag, with an Iranian crew that has been held hostage by the pirates for 45 days.

The US Naval destroyer, the USS Kidd, is attached to the carrier fleet of the USS Stennis, which has been the object of saber rattling by Iran. How fortuitous can you get?! To rescue Iranian fishermen with the very armada of American ships the Iranian Government has been threatening! You have to love the irony of it all. Just maybe, President Obama can parlay this into an icebreaker with Iran. I hope so.