Blair and Ahmadinejad play chess for lives of British prisoners

by Aleister
Published: Monday, April 9th, 2007

LONDON – After nearly two weeks of tense negotiation over the fates of Iran’s captured British soldiers, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad agreed to settle things in what Blair called “the only gentlemanly way”: through a game of chess. This breakthrough comes after much chest-thumping from either side, which itself prompted the idea that a competition would be in order. The terms of the game were that if Blair won, the prisoners would be released, while if Ahmadinejad won, he would get to execute the prisoners and pretty much anyone else who bugged him, like Blair, George W. Bush, Kofi Annan, The Jews, and Uwe Boll. He expressed regret that Anna Nicole Smith was already dead.

The decision to go with chess was an easy one because the game did not favor either side culturally; it has existed in both the Middle East and Europe for centuries, is internationally recognized and standardized, and does not require nuclear weapons to play. To ensure fair play, the game would be arbitrated by none other than Death himself, who has extensive experience with high-stakes chess and “kind of needed a break from collecting souls anyway.”

Unfortunately, three moves into the much-anticipated game on Thursday morning, President Ahmadinejad realized that he actually did not know how to play chess. He subsequently knocked the table over, scattering pieces everywhere, and told Blair that he could “have the stupid prisoners; the are a gift from the people of Iran. I didn’t even want them anyway.”

When asked why he agreed to the game in the first place, Ahmadinejad replied that he had been “counting on the natural superiority of Iran and our favor in the eyes of Allah to deliver victory into [his] hands.”

Needless to say, death was not amused by this turn of events, having to return to work in Iraq at the game’s conclusion, but the families of the returned prisoners could not be happier.