Britain
Heightens Confrontation
With Iran Over Detained Sailors
By Peter Symonds
30 March, 2007
World
Socialist Web
The
Blair government, backed by the Bush administration, yesterday stepped
up diplomatic pressure for the release of 15 British sailors and marines
detained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRG) last Friday. In an
already tense situation in the Persian Gulf, US aircraft carrier battle
groups have held a major military exercise over the past two days, while
British ministers in London called for Iran to be further diplomatically
isolated.
In a statement to parliament,
Prime Minister Tony Blair condemned Iran’s detention of the British
naval personnel as “completely unacceptable, wrong and illegal”.
He warned: “It is now time to ratchet up international and diplomatic
pressure in order to make sure that the Iranian government understands
their total isolation on this issue.”
British Foreign Secretary
Margaret Beckett announced that Britain had frozen bilateral talks with
Iran on all other issues until the sailors were returned. The Foreign
Office denounced footage shown on Iranian television of some of the
detainees as “completely unacceptable”. During the TV segment,
female sailor Faye Turney acknowledged that the British boats had “trespassed”
into Iranian waters and said the detainees were being well-treated.
Vice Admiral Charles Style
told a press conference that Britain “unambiguously contests”
Iranian assertions that the sailors were inside Iranian waters. He produced
charts, photographs and previously undisclosed navigational coordinates,
purportedly showing that the sailors were about 3 kilometres inside
Iraqi waters. He claimed that Iran had produced two conflicting sets
of coordinates during secret diplomatic discussions.
British “proof”
that its sailors were “ambushed” inside Iraqi territorial
waters cannot be taken at face value any more than Iran’s “substantial
evidence” to the contrary. The area of the Persian Gulf near the
Shatt al-Arab waterway—the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers—has long been the subject of dispute between Iraq and Iran.
“If this happened south of where the river boundary ends, knowing
the coordinates wouldn’t necessarily help us,” Robert Schofield
of King’s College, an expert on the waterway, explained to Associated
Press.
More significant than the
dispute over naval co-ordinates is the political context. The incident
took place as the US, with British backing, intensified the pressure
on Iran over its nuclear programs, its alleged supply of weapons to
anti-occupation insurgents in Iraq and claims that Tehran is supporting
“terrorism” throughout the Middle East. The US navy has
doubled the size of its fleet, stationing two aircraft carrier groups
in the area for the first time since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The
Pentagon has also sent Patriot anti-missile batteries to the Gulf States
and mine-sweepers to the Persian Gulf.
The British navy too has
doubled its presence in the Gulf since last October. The extra warships
included the HMS Cornwall, which dispatched the two light craft seized
last Friday by Iranian forces.
The military build up is
clearly aimed against Iran. Captain Bradley Johanson, commander of the
USS John C. Stennis, told the press: “If there is a strong [American]
presence, then it sends a clear message that you better be careful about
trying to intimidate others. Iran has adopted a very escalatory posture
with the things that they have done.” The Bush administration’s
own “escalatory posture” was evident during the past two
days of war games, as 15 warships and more than 100 warplanes practiced
manoeuvres and attacks not far from the Iranian coastline.
According to several press
reports, the Pentagon may well have accelerated the planned exercise
in response to the detention of the British sailors. A senior US military
official in Bahrain told ABC News that the huge show of force was “a
clear effort” to send a message to Iran. US naval officials said
the operation was “hastily planned” after the 15 Britons
were seized Friday. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino yesterday denied
any connection, saying: “There is no escalation of tensions on
our part.”
International investors are
certainly concerned about the sharpening tensions. As Reuters noted:
“US naval exercises in the Gulf have rattled global financial
markets, sending oil prices higher and contributing to declines in stock
prices. Markets got a jolt late on Tuesday by a rumour—which proved
unfounded—of a clash between Iran and the US navy.”
The US and British naval
build up in the Gulf is just one element of the US administration’s
provocative stance against Iran, which included the imposition of tougher
UN sanctions last Saturday. In January, President Bush declared that
US forces in Iraq would “seek out and destroy” Iranian networks
providing arms and other support to Shiite militias inside Iraq. On
the same day, US special forces conducted an early morning raid on an
Iranian diplomatic office in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil. The US
military has detained five Iranian officials without charge for more
than two months despite calls by the Iraqi government for their release.
The Irbil raid was a calculated
US provocation which, as Washington was well aware, could produce a
reaction. The British-based Telegraph confirmed this week that the CIA
warned British intelligence chiefs that the arrests could result in
reprisals, possibly against British troops in southern Iraq. “Although
the CIA alert led to the United States raising its official security
threat throughout the Middle East and elsewhere, Britain did not follow
suit,” the article explained.
Several commentators have
speculated that Iran may link the fate of the British sailors to the
release of its officials held in Iraq—a claim that Iranian officials
have denied. While the British and international media generally assume
that the detention of the sailors is a calculated plot by Tehran, it
cannot be ruled out that the incident was engineered in London or Washington.
Veteran American journalist Seymour Hersh, among others, has alleged
that US and Israeli intelligence agents are actively operating inside
Iran.
The US-based Stratfor think
tank, which has close links to the American intelligence and military
establishment, headlined its article on the incident “Another
step in the US-Iranian Covert War”. While uncertain about the
motive for detaining the British sailors, the article indicated that
it may be linked to Western intelligence operations inside Iran. It
pointed to the alleged defection of a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard
general Ali Reza Asghari earlier this year. He is reportedly being interrogated
by US intelligence, including over Tehran’s knowledge of Western
agents operating inside Iran.
According to Stratfor, “With
this in mind, there have been recent indications from US and Israeli
intelligence sources that the British MI6 was engaged in an operation
to extract one of its agents from Iran, but a leak tipped MOIS [Iranian
intelligence] off to the plan. According to an unconfirmed source, the
IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps] nabbed the British [MI6] personnel,
as well as the agent, to use as a bargaining chip to secure the release
of the five detained Iranians. If these negotiations go poorly for Iran,
the Britons could very well be tried for espionage.”
Whatever the exact reasons
for the seizure of the British sailors, the chief responsibility for
their predicament rests with the Blair government and the Bush administration.
The only reason for the presence of the British warships in waters disputed
by Iraq and Iran is the illegal US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq
in 2003. Far from pulling out of Iraq, the White House is now menacing
neighbouring Iran as part of broader US ambitions to dominate the oil-rich
region.
It is in this dangerous political
hothouse that a small incident involving the detention of British sailors
can spiral out of control. Several right-wing British newspapers have
already denounced the Blair government for failing to take tougher action
against Iran. An editorial in the Times on Tuesday condemned “the
pusillanimous timidity of British officials and politicians, who have
failed disgracefully to confront Iran with the ultimatum this flagrant
aggression demands”.
The Telegraph argued for
intensified sanctions against Iran unless “it stops lying to us
about the details of its nuclear program, to stop arming and directing
insurgents in southern Iraq, and to stop violating Iraqi territorial
waters.... We wait anxiously to see whether this weakened and discredited
Prime Minister has the necessary spine to do what is required, or whether
Britain will persist in presenting its weakest aspect to a potential
enemy.”
To date, the Bush administration
has kept a relatively low profile over the incident. However, Lieutenant
Commander Erik Horner, second-in command of the USS Underwood in the
Gulf, left no doubt about US reaction to a similar situation involving
American sailors. “The unique US navy rules of engagement say
we not only have the right to self-defence, but also an obligation to
self-defence,” he said. Asked if his men would have fired on Iranian
forces, he bluntly declared: “Agreed. Yes”.
In other words, the Bush
administration has stationed a huge US naval presence in the Persian
Gulf with rules of engagement that oblige US forces to respond to any
incident—actual or imagined. Any clash could of course become
the pretext for unleashing a devastating assault on Iran using the overwhelming
US firepower now in place.
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