Promoted by Steven D.
Also at DKos.
Regardless of whether the British frigate involved was in Iranian or Iraqi waters, Iran has custody of 15 British sailors and marines. Will this incident become the “trigger” that starts a U.S.-Iran war?
British Prime Minister Tony Blair says that he wants to resolve the issue diplomatically, but calls the situation “very serious” and hopes the Iranian government understands “how fundamental an issue this is for the British government.”
We don’t know a heck of a lot about the incident. Here’s a synopsis from the San Francisco Chronicle:
Eight Royal Navy sailors and seven marines, traveling in high-speed inflatable rafts through the cramped waters off the Iranian and Iraqi coasts, had just finished inspecting an Iranian-flagged merchant ship for contraband Friday morning when they were surrounded by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps gunboats, detained and hauled off to a nearby Iranian military base.
Iranian officials say the Britons were being held for violating Iranian territorial waters. But British and U.S. military officials insisted the Iranian gunships crossed into Iraqi waters. In a brief communication with a passing British helicopter, Iranians said the 15 men were safe, a U.S. official said.
This incident is both troubling and puzzling. Coalition and Iranian naval vessels have been dancing around these waters together for some time. Why did this snatch and grab operation occur now?
In the era of reliable satellite navigation, it seems unlikely that any of the vessels involved didn’t known exactly where they were. The demarcation line between Iraqi and Iranian territorial waters in that part of the waterway may be contested, but that’s not a new controversy. Why would the British conduct an intercept operation in what they knew to be contested waters? Moreover, why would the Iranians pull a move this bold if they knew their claims that the incident took place in their waters would be questioned? (And they almost certainly must have known it.) Why did the British sailors and marines let the Revolutionary Guard take them without a fight, and why did their frigate allow the Guard’s gunboats speed away without pursuing or challenging them?
We can spin scenarios until Wisconsin cows give cottage cheese. It’s possible that the merchant ship being searched was carrying something important enough for the Brits to take extreme risks to find it and for the Iranians to take extreme risks to make sure the Brits didn’t discover what it was. It could also simply be that one of both of the local commanders involved committed colossal errors in judgment. Given the pollution in today’s information environment, we may never know what really happened.
This affair has features resonant of the Tonkin Gulf incident that Lyndon Johnson used to escalate U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the Iranian Hostage crisis, in which 52 American citizens were held by Iran for 444 days and that many consider to have been the key factor of Jimmy Carter’s defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980.
We can’t know today how things will play out, but I wouldn’t characterize the prospects for a peaceful solution as “bright.”
Much of what comes out of the mouths of Iran’s leaders is a vainglorious attempt to gain street credibility at home and throughout the Middle East, where it seeks to become a dominant regional power. But supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’s recent remarks are somewhat difficult to decipher.
Until today, what we have done has been in accordance with international regulations. But if they [the U.N. Security Council] take illegal actions, we too can take illegal actions and will do so.
No one is certain what Khamene means by “illegal actions” that Iran might take. Was the abduction of British sailors and marines an example?
To date, despite its belligerent rhetoric, I’ve considered Iran’s leadership to be rational actors. Now, I’m starting to wonder. Up to now, Britain has been opposed to a unilateral U.S. attack on Iran. The maritime body snatch might reverse the U.K.’s position on that issue.
The Iranians’ pal Russia isn’t too happy with them either. Iran is falling behind on payments for Russia’s help in building their reactor in Bushehr. Russia and China have released a joint statement calling for Iran to comply with U.N. sanctions, a remarkable step considering that they are Iran’s most powerful allies.
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad responded:
Iran will not stop its peaceful and legal nuclear trend even for one second because of such an illegal resolution…
… The Iranian nation will not forget those who backed and those who rejected (the resolution), while adjusting its international relations.
Wheels Within Wheels
We don’t know what’s going on inside Iran. Reformists won a landslide victory in February’s general election, a sign that Ahmadinejad has lost support of the population and the ruling mullahs. Perhaps the internal political situation in Iran is so splintered at this point that they’re no longer able to conduct a coherent foreign policy. Right now, they’re pushing their two best friends into the arms of their enemies.
It’s like they’ve stolen a page from the Bush administration playbook.
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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
It’s important to remember that there are strong divisions within Iran’s government, even though the current executive is favored by the religious leadership.
It could be deliberate by the government itself, but it could also be an unintended action by a segment within Iran that is only peripherally controlled by the government.
I don’t trust Blair to resolve it any more than I’d trust Rice. But what I keep thinking is, today GPS records are in half the cars and most of the cell phones. It’s simply not possible that there wouldn’t be a very accurate record of where they were. If Britain has not produced such a record, I’d bet they were in Iranian waters.
…the proof should have been the first thing to come out of the admiralty.
Did you see the American military commander’s response to the Brit commandos surrendering to the Iranian forces? He called them wimps. Said American troops would have “defended themselves” no matter how outnumbered:
LINK
Doesn’t this mean the US is itching for Iran to do what it did to the British to American forces also, so we can have another “Remember the Maine!” moment?
I read that too Steven and all I could think was thank god it wasn’t gung-ho Americans while that stupid Toby Keith song was running through my mind…something about putting a boot up someones ass..shoot first, ask questions later and all that good stuff.
Yep, my reaction too.
My best guess off hand is this is one of those unintended clusterfucks and now everyone is trying to save face and act tough for the stupidity or carelessness of soldiers on both sides. These kind of incidents are almost always not what they seem..like ‘Remember the Maine’, the Gulf of Tonkin incident you mentioned and so on.
I’m thinking too Iran has been pushed around and threatened for years now with no retaliation and British troops know this and decided to push a bit farther thinking nothing would happen…but they picked a day when the Iranian commander was having a bad day and said to hell with it…then again it could be a lot more sinister but I certainly hope this works out so that everyone can save face.
This all sounds like a case of below-the-waist thinking by the on scene commanders.
The title of this article could just as well be:
‘What is Britain Up To?’.
Of course they are…
And some segments within the Iranian government want it too.
Any possibility they were severely disappointed…that they thought (incorrectly) the U.S. was close enough to join the fray?
Iran knows that UK/US must be particularly careful to be ‘right’ when heading into armed conflict with Iran. Especially the UK. The border dispute with Iraq creates an unnacceptable ‘ambiguity’ for Britain – the murkiness of ‘who is right and who is wrong’ makes it impossible for Britain to turn the incident into cause for war without losing even more credibility.
Iran knew all this and had the need to act against so much International pressure, so naturally it is in this disputed area that they engage in their brinkmanship.
They have more leverage right now than Britain and are pressing their advantage to the fullest for any number of reasons, as mentioned in the article. The very least they will get out of this is more street credit as the anti-Western capital of the Islamic world, but likely also is a pro-Iranian demarkation of the international border, if not more if it is indeed proveable that the Brits were not just in disputed water, but in Iranian territory.
What are the Brits up to? Their necks in Stupid.
A few days before these sailors were taken into custody, I read a report that Iran was unhappy about the U.S. abducting and holding its diplomats in Iraq, and saying that it can do the same. The article noted that it would be easy for Iran to seize Westerners in Iraq, and speculated that it might do so. But seizing these sailors in disputed waters was a more clever move, as you point out.
And Iran was clever to seize Brits and not Americans, given Steven D’s observation that U.S. rules of engagement call for resisting capture. (In any case, if the Brits were on “high-speed inflatable rafts”, and the Iranians were on “gunboats”, I don’t think the Brits would have fared very well if they had opened fire on the Iranians.)
Someone at dKos was more resourceful than I. He found the article I was thinking of:
So they kidnapped Brits instead. It’s called disinformation. But they made their point.
London Times: Iran to hit back at US `kidnaps’
And, yes, I deliberately moved the apostrophe.
The Frigate’s radar or sonar records would clearly have shown the location of the Iranian ship, whether in Iraqi, Iranian, or international waters. How long had the British been tracking it? A merchant ship isn’t exactly invisible!
Over at BagNewsNotes, there is a lovely picture showing the HMS Cornwall at 141 meters and an Iranian gunboat at 7-8 meters.
HMS Cornwall is the first Type 22 Batch 3 Frigate, designed to detect and destroy submarines at long range using bow mounted ‘active’ and towed-array ‘passive’ sonars, plus torpedoes fired from a triple tubes or dropped from the ship’s helicopter. She is the first RN ship to be fitted with Harpoon anti-ship missiles, giving her an extensive ‘over the horizon’ anti-surface capability. GWS 25 Mod3 SEAWOLF and GOALKEEPER CIWS3 anti-missile missile systems give the ship excellent self defence against all airborne targets, including sea-skimming missiles.
http://www.fleetscale.co.uk/pages/type22/cambltwn.htm
The Frigate could have run over them as speedbumps! Or its helicopters could have sent up enough choppy water to force a halt. Or its guns could have fired a warning shot. Yes, you risk losing your crew members, but if they think they are boarding a smuggler or a saboteur, they must be prepared for unpleasantness. Did they not have arms, flares, grenades, phones? Or a lesson in paasive resistance? (enough to delay the seizure until help arrived)
The radar should have shown the gunboats as well, and I’d like to assume that the Frigate was watching its rafts like a mother duck in dangerous waters will watch her chicks!
Since the commander of the Frigate hasn’t posted coordinates, radar record, GPS record, or anything to prove that the operation wasn’t in Iranian waters, the likelihood of trespass is rather high. The Brits can huff through their moustaches, but proof of some sort is demanded in these days of diminished credibility.
Personally, I don’t think that the US and UK should be nabbing Iranian diplomats, stealing their computers, letterhead, consulate seals, etc., as at Irbil (although maybe Ledeen can get a better faker this time if he has better props). I also don’t think the CIA should be kidnapping people and sending them off to some black hole to be tortured. When our own people get captured, it makes it so much harder to demand access and reasonable care.
The Iranians could seize the high moral ground from us as easily as they took these captives if they treat them according to the Geneva Conventions.
And that is the real shame.
– Former UK ambassador Craig Murray