John Bolton's remarks are typical of him. It is his type of thinking that has brought the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan costing billions not to mention the lives lost. If Bolton or the view of some US naval officers had prevailed all fifteen would probably be dead and no doubt many Iranians with who knows what results.
The way events are going it would not be surprising if there is an eventual US attack on Iran.
US revs up pressure on Iran after release of Britons
Published: Friday April 6, 2007
The United States Thursday shrugged off Iran's release of 15 captured British sailors and warned it faced tougher sanctions if it does not bow to UN demands to halt its uranium enrichment operations.
Refusing to accept the idea that the return of the Britons 12 days after they were seized showed Tehran's readiness to engage the international community, the White House reminded Tehran of the UN Security Council's demands on its nuclear program.
"I would view the detention of the British sailors as not in line with their willingness to work with the international community," the White House national security council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said, referring to Iran's leaders.
"What would show that they are more in line with the international community is to comply with the UN Security Council resolutions, and suspend their uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities," said Johndroe.
"We'd be hopeful to not have to go back to the UN Security Council for an additional sanction regime," the spokesman said.
And US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack accused Iran of using "hostage-taking as a tool of its international diplomacy."
For its part Tehran Thursday declared its refusal to bow to pressure on its nuclear program, which it says is for power generation but major Western powers believe is aimed at developing nuclear weapons.
Shortly after Johndroe's remarks, Iranian state television reported that Iran's nuclear chief Ali Larijani told the European Union there was no chance that Tehran would suspend uranium enrichment.
The exchange marked the resumption of more strident rhetoric after the 12-day crisis over the British sailors and marines, who Iran captured in or near Iranian waters on March 23 March.
Tehran declared the 14 men and one woman had illegally moved into Iranian waters, but Britain maintains they were seized in Iraqi waters where they were carrying out anti-smuggling oprations under UN resolutions.
The United States, which does not maintain direct relations with Iran, on Thursday welcomed their release, but tellingly praised London, not Tehran, for the peaceful end of the tense standoff.
US President George W. Bush, on his Texas ranch for a long Easter weekend, spoke for about an hour by secure video with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Johndroe told reporters.
"The president welcomed the safe return of the British personnel who had been detained in Iran. He also commended the British on their resolve in bringing the situation to a peaceful resolution," he said.
McCormack confirmed that Washington had toned down its rhetoric throughout the standoff, though on Saturday Bush referred to the Britons as "hostages" who had been seized in Iraqi waters.
"In the context of an ongoing hostage crisis, of course we are not going to say anything that could make the situation worse or make it more difficult to realize a peaceful solution," McCormack said. "Absolutely, we're going to tailor our rhetoric."
At the same time, McCormack hinted at possible face-to-face talks between US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on the sidelines of an international conference on Iraq in early May.
"We have said from the beginning, when this first surfaced, that if there would be a ministerial conference, that we are not going to exclude any particular diplomatic interaction," he said.
McCormack emphasized the possible bilateral meeting would focus on Iraq exclusively, and not address the Iranian nuclear program. US officials denied any link to the Britons' release.
On another front, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that US officials were not inclined to release five Iranians captured in Iraq, and accused Iran of supporting Iraqi insurgents.
"I think there's no inclination right now to let them go," Gates told reporters, rejecting speculation that the United States was preparing to release the group or allow consular access to them as part of a deal involving Iran's release of the British captives.
Meanwhile controversial former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton described the hostage standoff as a "double victory" for Tehran.
Iran "won a victory when they captured the hostages and they won a victory when they released the hostages" Bolton said on the US-funded Alhurra Arabic-language television network.
"I think they were testing British resolve in response to this provocative act and I think they already had their answer, which was that the British are not going to respond in a strong fashion," he said.
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Showing posts with label Iran capture of UK sailors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iran capture of UK sailors. Show all posts
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Iran release UK captives
The gift from Ahmadinejad is hardly a gift but I guess one shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth as the saying goes. The big plus for Iran is that after this gesture it may be difficult for the US or Israel to sell an attack on Iran, an attack that seems to be already prepared. Don't be surprised if there is some new confrontation, one manufactured by the US.
President in star turnBy Lachlan Carmichael in London
April 05, 2007 05:22am
Article from: Agence France-Presse
IRAN'S President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pulled off a propaganda coup with the release of 15 British sailors, as he sought to push his image as a decisive regional player, former diplomats said.
While Britain will no doubt remain unhappy about the parading of its nationals on Iranian television over the last two weeks, in the short term his unexpected pre-Easter “gift” will likely earn him mostly positive headlines.
Former Iranian diplomat Mehdi Varzi said that Mr Ahmedinejad had milked the crisis well, showing the Iranian people that former colonial power Britain was not militarily omnipotent, while also boosting his credentials among Arab neighbours.
Mr Varzi noted that the sailors were paraded on Iran's state-run Arabic network Al-Alam, a sign Tehran was targeting an Arab audience increasingly angry with US and British power in the region.
“In a sense Iran can walk away from this (crisis) today and say it won,” Mr Varzi said.
Mr Varzi served as a diplomat in the Islamic Republic's first two years and now runs an energy consultancy in Britain.
Mansoor Farhang, a former Iranian ambassador to the UN, said on BBC television that Iran had been indulging in some “muscle flexing” to show it was a “power to be reckoned with”.
David Owen, a former British foreign secretary, said he now hoped that Mr Ahmadinejad would steadily improve Iran's tense ties with Britain and the US as well as play a constructive role in stabilising neighbouring Iraq.
“I think they want to turn over a new leaf,” Mr Owen told Sky News television.
He recalled that Iran tried but failed to improve relations in 2003 with the US, which has kept sanctions in place since Iranian students seized hostages at the US embassy following the Islamic revolution.
There could even be progress, he added, in the standoff between the western powers and Iran over its nuclear program, which Tehran said was peaceful but Washington said concealed a quest for nuclear weapons.
“He's a hardliner. We shouldn't delude ourselves, but it's a good step,” Mr Owen said.
Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin said the Iranian President had cleverly manipulated the situation to present his surprise as a gesture of personal largesse.
“He played a blinder,” Mr Jenkin said.
Mr Varzi said the motives behind Iran's capture of the 15 naval personnel remained murky, as did the question of whether it had sought or obtained a secret deal to win the return of Iranians held in US-occupied Iraq.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted there had been “no negotiation” to secure the sailors' freedom and US State Department spokesman Tom Casey said there was “no link whatsoever” with the Iranians in Iraq.
Varzi and another former Iranian diplomat, Hormoz Naficy, said Iran had wanted to send a message to the US as well as Britain.
“There are people I believe in the highest elements in the regime who really do expect at some stage an American strike against Iran,” Mr Varzi said.
The message was “we will not keel over” like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, he said.
“They know they cannot defeat a western military attack against the country.
"What they also know is they don't have to fight the West on their own terms.
"This is what is called asymetrical warfare,” he added.
Iran feels encircled by the US, with US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as aircraft carrier groups in the Gulf, the former diplomats said.
“Iran wants to be recognised and seen as an actor in the area and not ignored,” Mr Varzi said.
President in star turnBy Lachlan Carmichael in London
April 05, 2007 05:22am
Article from: Agence France-Presse
IRAN'S President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pulled off a propaganda coup with the release of 15 British sailors, as he sought to push his image as a decisive regional player, former diplomats said.
While Britain will no doubt remain unhappy about the parading of its nationals on Iranian television over the last two weeks, in the short term his unexpected pre-Easter “gift” will likely earn him mostly positive headlines.
Former Iranian diplomat Mehdi Varzi said that Mr Ahmedinejad had milked the crisis well, showing the Iranian people that former colonial power Britain was not militarily omnipotent, while also boosting his credentials among Arab neighbours.
Mr Varzi noted that the sailors were paraded on Iran's state-run Arabic network Al-Alam, a sign Tehran was targeting an Arab audience increasingly angry with US and British power in the region.
“In a sense Iran can walk away from this (crisis) today and say it won,” Mr Varzi said.
Mr Varzi served as a diplomat in the Islamic Republic's first two years and now runs an energy consultancy in Britain.
Mansoor Farhang, a former Iranian ambassador to the UN, said on BBC television that Iran had been indulging in some “muscle flexing” to show it was a “power to be reckoned with”.
David Owen, a former British foreign secretary, said he now hoped that Mr Ahmadinejad would steadily improve Iran's tense ties with Britain and the US as well as play a constructive role in stabilising neighbouring Iraq.
“I think they want to turn over a new leaf,” Mr Owen told Sky News television.
He recalled that Iran tried but failed to improve relations in 2003 with the US, which has kept sanctions in place since Iranian students seized hostages at the US embassy following the Islamic revolution.
There could even be progress, he added, in the standoff between the western powers and Iran over its nuclear program, which Tehran said was peaceful but Washington said concealed a quest for nuclear weapons.
“He's a hardliner. We shouldn't delude ourselves, but it's a good step,” Mr Owen said.
Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin said the Iranian President had cleverly manipulated the situation to present his surprise as a gesture of personal largesse.
“He played a blinder,” Mr Jenkin said.
Mr Varzi said the motives behind Iran's capture of the 15 naval personnel remained murky, as did the question of whether it had sought or obtained a secret deal to win the return of Iranians held in US-occupied Iraq.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted there had been “no negotiation” to secure the sailors' freedom and US State Department spokesman Tom Casey said there was “no link whatsoever” with the Iranians in Iraq.
Varzi and another former Iranian diplomat, Hormoz Naficy, said Iran had wanted to send a message to the US as well as Britain.
“There are people I believe in the highest elements in the regime who really do expect at some stage an American strike against Iran,” Mr Varzi said.
The message was “we will not keel over” like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, he said.
“They know they cannot defeat a western military attack against the country.
"What they also know is they don't have to fight the West on their own terms.
"This is what is called asymetrical warfare,” he added.
Iran feels encircled by the US, with US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as aircraft carrier groups in the Gulf, the former diplomats said.
“Iran wants to be recognised and seen as an actor in the area and not ignored,” Mr Varzi said.
Monday, April 2, 2007
The fake map of boundaries in the UK sailor incident
As can be seen the boundary is shown clearly demarcated even though there is no agree upon boundary! The UK naval officer involved in the incident told the obvious truth: either side could claim the waters. While Murray is correct that Iran is playing a dangerous game in seizing the sailors in disputed waters isn't the UK playing a dangerous game by boarding civilian vessels in these waters as well? I just read a CBC report that Iran has agreed not to parade the sailors on TV any more in the light of positive responses from the UK. Perhaps the situation may wind down.
How I know Blair faked Iran map
By CRAIG MURRAY, Former Ambassador to Uzbekistan and Head of the Foreign Office's Maritime Section - More by this author »
Last updated at 11:44am on 1st April 2007
)
Like most senior Royal Navy officers, Commodore Nick Lambert has great reserves of professional expertise and common sense. The Coalition task force commander was aboard HMS Cornwall when 15 Royal Navy personnel serving on the frigate were seized at gunpoint by Iranian forces on March 23.
The Navy states the 14 men and one woman were on a routine patrol in rigid inflatables off Iraqi shores - Iran insists they were in its waters illegally.
A few hours after the 15 were seized, Cdre Lambert said: 'There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that they were in Iraqi territorial waters. Equally, the Iranians may well claim that they were in their territorial waters. The extent and definition of territorial waters in this part of the world is very complicated.'
•
And his predecessor in command of the task force, Commodore Peter Lockwood of the Royal Australian Navy, said last October: 'No maritime border has been agreed upon by the countries.'
Both officers told the truth. It is the burial of this truth by No 10 spin doctors, and Tony Blair's remark that he is 'utterly certain' the incident took place within Iraqi territorial limits, that has escalated this from an incident to a crisis. Blair is being fatuous.
How can you be certain which side of a boundary you are when that boundary has never been drawn?
I am best known as the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, but from 1989 to 1992 I headed the Foreign Office's maritime section. This included responsibility for territorial sea claims and for negotiating our own maritime boundaries. The expertise of the Royal Navy was invaluable.
For eight months I also worked with Royal Naval and Defence Intelligence Service personnel in the Embargo Surveillance Centre, a secret unit operating 24 hours a day from an underground command centre in Central London to prevent Iraqi attempts at weapons procurement.
We analysed information from intelligence and other sources, and could instruct Royal Naval craft in the Gulf to board and inspect individual ships. I was responsible for getting the political clearance for operations just like the one now in question, in this exact location. So I know what I'm talking about.
There is no agreed boundary in the Northern Gulf, either between Iran and Iraq or between Iraq and Kuwait. The Iran-Iraq border has been agreed inside the Shatt al-Arab waterway, because there it is also the land border. But that agreement does not extend beyond the low tide line of the coast.
Even that very limited agreement is arguably no longer in force. Since it was reached in 1975, a war has been fought over it, and ten-year reviews - necessary because waters and sandbanks in this region move about dramatically - have never been carried out.
But what about the map the Ministry of Defence produced on Tuesday, with territorial boundaries set out by a clear red line, and the co-ordinates of the incident marked in relation to it?
I have news for you. Those boundaries are fake. They were drawn up by the MoD. They are not agreed or recognised by any international authority.
To put it at its most charitable, they are a potential boundary. It is accepted practice, where no boundary exists, to work by a rule-of-thumb idea of where a boundary, based on a median line between the two coasts, might be.
But to elevate that to a hard and fast boundary, and then base a major international incident on being a few hundred yards one side or the other, is out of order.
Negotiating a maritime boundary is horribly complicated. To set a median line you agree a series of triangulation points on both coastlines and do a geometric triangulation exercise to find a line running out from the coast.
Of course, both sides will argue about which triangulation points on the coast to use. You are allowed, for example, to draw a line across a bay entrance and use that as the coast, but there is plenty of room for the other side to argue over where that line is drawn.
That is only the start. For territorial seas you start at the low tide mark and uninhabited rocks and sandbanks count.
There is huge room for argument - ownership of a useless sandbank is not necessarily a settled thing. Then it really gets complex. What if the sandbank appears only at low tide or moves? In this area of the Gulf, sands shift endlessly.
It is, in short, impossible to say where a real, negotiated or adjudicated Iran-Iraq boundary might eventually lie. It is also why the instinct of both the Foreign Office and MoD was to play this quietly and negotiate our people back.
But the No10 spin doctors stepped in, seeing a propaganda opportunity to portray Blair as fighting evil Iranians.
Navy and Foreign Office experts were horrified at the notion of publishing that map.
In doing so we entrenched Blair's ridiculous boast that our 15 Navy personnel were definitely in Iraqi territorial seas, and claimed the right to dictate Iran's boundary.
It's not surprising Iraq backed British claims - the map is favourable to them. But it makes compromise on the captives very difficult.
Of course, the Iranians equally cannot say unilaterally that these are their territorial waters, and act as if they owned them.
In disputed waters it behoves everyone to act with caution and respect. Plainly the Iranians are not doing that.
None of this vindicates Iran's aggressive behaviour in holding the captives or the so-called confessions.
For Iran to detain the British sailors in these circumstances was provocative and bellicose.
To hold them for a few hours could have been taken as a legitimate, if over forceful way, of indicating their claim to the disputed waters in which the British personnel boarded a neutral vessel.
But Iranian behaviour in the past few days has tipped over into the plain illegal and indefensible.
However I have no doubt Blair is delighted at last to have a Middle East issue with popular support before May's elections.
Yes, Iran has a bad government that is behaving stupidly. But perhaps it is not alone. Both sides have to climb down. We have to state that no agreed border exists and that we had no intention of straying into Iranian waters.
The Iranian government should let our people go immediately. That is the way out of this mess for both sides.
These are extracts from Craig Murray's blog. The opinions expressed are those of the author.
Iran Profits from oil price rise with crisis.
This is from the Scotsman. Of course all oil producers are getting a lot more for their oil because of the price rise including all those who oppose Iran!
Iran makes £55 million from hostage crisis as oil prices soar
GERRI PEEV
POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (gpeev@scotsman.com)
IRAN is gaining up to £5 million a day from detaining 15 British sailors and marines as the crisis causes the price of oil to rise dramatically.
Since Iran's Revolutionary Guards seized the Britons 11 days ago, the price of oil has soared 10 per cent, reaching six-month highs of $66 per barrel in New York last week.
According to OPEC figures, Iran exports 2.3 million barrels of oil per day, meaning Tehran has profited from the crisis by up to £5 million a day. By the end of today, the extra cash it has raked in could total £55 million.
While the oil price has risen, the public pressure on Iran was lowered yesterday as more conciliatory stances were adopted.
Des Browne, the Secretary of State for Defence, said the UK government was holding bilateral talks with Iran over the detainees, who were seized in the Persian Gulf on 23 March.
"We are anxious that this matter be resolved as quickly as possible, and that it be resolved by diplomatic means and we are bending every single effort to that," he said.
And speaking to the BBC, Douglas Alexander, the Scottish Secretary, said:
"The responsible way forward is to continue the often unglamorous but important and quiet diplomatic work."
Iran also seemed to signal that a compromise could be possible after Manouchehr Mottaki, the country's foreign minister, said he was examining a letter from the British Foreign Office about the hostages.
"This note contains many points which will be considered," he said. "However, we are waiting for a change in the attitude of the British and a moderate approach by this country towards Iran's legal requests."
The Foreign Office is said to be considering offering Iran a way out without losing face over the crisis. One strategy discussed at a meeting of Whitehall's crisis committee would be to send a Royal Navy captain as a special envoy to Tehran, to seek a deal.
Attempts have backfired in recent days to "shame" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime into admitting it was in the wrong after the Ministry of Defence released co-ordinates of where the UK team were picked up. Neither the UN nor the EU would fully back tough statements from Britain.
Mr Ahmadinejad, the Iran presiddnt, said on Saturday that Britain had not reacted in a "logical or legal" way. "The British government, instead of apologising and expressing regret over the action taken, started to claim that we are in their debt," he said.,
The US president, George Bush, waded into the row, accusing Iran of "inexcusable behaviour", adding: "Iran must give back the hostages. They're innocent, they did nothing wrong and they were summarily plucked out of waters."
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, MP, the former foreign secretary, called for pressure on the Iranians, but said the threat of sanctions should have been put "privately" first, "because otherwise the Iranians are pushed into a humiliating climbdown".
Meanwhile, the MoD's claim the Britons had been in Iraqi waters when they were captured was challenged yesterday.
Craig Murray, a former British ambassador, accused Tony Blair of being too cavalier in his insistence that the British were in Iraqi territory at the time of their kidnap at gunpoint.
VIOLENT PROTESTERS DEMAND BRITISH EMBASSY BE CLOSED
HUNDREDS of students threw rocks and fireworks at the British Embassy in Tehran yesterday, calling for the expulsion of the ambassador amid the stand-off over Iran's detention of 15 British sailors and marines.
Several dozen policemen prevented the protesters from entering the compound, although a few briefly scaled a fence outside the embassy's walls before being pushed back.
The protesters chanted "death to Britain" and "death to America" as they hurled stones into the courtyard of the embassy. They also shouted "the British spies should be tried".
Inside the compound, one diplomat said the atmosphere was "fairly relaxed" and that no fire or petrol bombs had been hurled over the walls.
But outside, student groups demanded that Tehran expel Geoffrey Adams, the British ambassador, and close down the embassy, calling it a "den of spies". They also urged Tehran not to release Leading Seaman Faye Turney, the lone female captive, or show any flexibility until the British have apologised.
The student protesters at the embassy were dispersed by Iranian police after two hours. The demonstrators belong to the hardline Basij volunteer militia, which is under the control of the Revolutionary Guards holding the Britons captive.
One demonstrator warned that the British Embassy could face a similar fate to that of the US mission in Tehran - stormed with hostages taken in 1980 - if "Britain keeps on speaking nonsense".
Iran makes £55 million from hostage crisis as oil prices soar
GERRI PEEV
POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (gpeev@scotsman.com)
IRAN is gaining up to £5 million a day from detaining 15 British sailors and marines as the crisis causes the price of oil to rise dramatically.
Since Iran's Revolutionary Guards seized the Britons 11 days ago, the price of oil has soared 10 per cent, reaching six-month highs of $66 per barrel in New York last week.
According to OPEC figures, Iran exports 2.3 million barrels of oil per day, meaning Tehran has profited from the crisis by up to £5 million a day. By the end of today, the extra cash it has raked in could total £55 million.
While the oil price has risen, the public pressure on Iran was lowered yesterday as more conciliatory stances were adopted.
Des Browne, the Secretary of State for Defence, said the UK government was holding bilateral talks with Iran over the detainees, who were seized in the Persian Gulf on 23 March.
"We are anxious that this matter be resolved as quickly as possible, and that it be resolved by diplomatic means and we are bending every single effort to that," he said.
And speaking to the BBC, Douglas Alexander, the Scottish Secretary, said:
"The responsible way forward is to continue the often unglamorous but important and quiet diplomatic work."
Iran also seemed to signal that a compromise could be possible after Manouchehr Mottaki, the country's foreign minister, said he was examining a letter from the British Foreign Office about the hostages.
"This note contains many points which will be considered," he said. "However, we are waiting for a change in the attitude of the British and a moderate approach by this country towards Iran's legal requests."
The Foreign Office is said to be considering offering Iran a way out without losing face over the crisis. One strategy discussed at a meeting of Whitehall's crisis committee would be to send a Royal Navy captain as a special envoy to Tehran, to seek a deal.
Attempts have backfired in recent days to "shame" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime into admitting it was in the wrong after the Ministry of Defence released co-ordinates of where the UK team were picked up. Neither the UN nor the EU would fully back tough statements from Britain.
Mr Ahmadinejad, the Iran presiddnt, said on Saturday that Britain had not reacted in a "logical or legal" way. "The British government, instead of apologising and expressing regret over the action taken, started to claim that we are in their debt," he said.,
The US president, George Bush, waded into the row, accusing Iran of "inexcusable behaviour", adding: "Iran must give back the hostages. They're innocent, they did nothing wrong and they were summarily plucked out of waters."
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, MP, the former foreign secretary, called for pressure on the Iranians, but said the threat of sanctions should have been put "privately" first, "because otherwise the Iranians are pushed into a humiliating climbdown".
Meanwhile, the MoD's claim the Britons had been in Iraqi waters when they were captured was challenged yesterday.
Craig Murray, a former British ambassador, accused Tony Blair of being too cavalier in his insistence that the British were in Iraqi territory at the time of their kidnap at gunpoint.
VIOLENT PROTESTERS DEMAND BRITISH EMBASSY BE CLOSED
HUNDREDS of students threw rocks and fireworks at the British Embassy in Tehran yesterday, calling for the expulsion of the ambassador amid the stand-off over Iran's detention of 15 British sailors and marines.
Several dozen policemen prevented the protesters from entering the compound, although a few briefly scaled a fence outside the embassy's walls before being pushed back.
The protesters chanted "death to Britain" and "death to America" as they hurled stones into the courtyard of the embassy. They also shouted "the British spies should be tried".
Inside the compound, one diplomat said the atmosphere was "fairly relaxed" and that no fire or petrol bombs had been hurled over the walls.
But outside, student groups demanded that Tehran expel Geoffrey Adams, the British ambassador, and close down the embassy, calling it a "den of spies". They also urged Tehran not to release Leading Seaman Faye Turney, the lone female captive, or show any flexibility until the British have apologised.
The student protesters at the embassy were dispersed by Iranian police after two hours. The demonstrators belong to the hardline Basij volunteer militia, which is under the control of the Revolutionary Guards holding the Britons captive.
One demonstrator warned that the British Embassy could face a similar fate to that of the US mission in Tehran - stormed with hostages taken in 1980 - if "Britain keeps on speaking nonsense".
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Iran Ahead of the Game
It seems that it is a dangerous game and already pitbulls in the UK and US are straining at their leashes. Where is the dog whisperer when we need him!
Mar 30, 2007
Iran ahead of the game - for now
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
"The US is not escalating tensions with Iran," said a Pentagon
spokesperson in reference to the major US naval exercise in Persian
Gulf "off the coast of Iran", per the wire reports. That is, a hair
stretch beyond Iran's 12-nautical-mile territorial waters.
The Iranians can be excused if they think otherwise - that the purpose
of the massive US maneuver at their doorstep, involving two
aircraft-carrier task forces and some 10,000 troops, is to send a
"strong signal" to them about the price they may have to pay if they
persist in defying the will of US power and its allies. This is not to
mention a French aircraft carrier making a solidarity appearance in
Persian Gulf waters at the same time, thus adding to the overall
Western menace with regard to Iran.
As usual, the US double-speak has continued unabated. Thus, precisely
at a time when the overwhelming weight of US firepower is put on full
display against the Iranians, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has
expressed the his country's readiness to engage in "high-level"
dialogue with Iran, as if to make a small dent in any Iranian paranoia
about the military intentions of the United States.
Gates' small words of comfort have been overshadowed, however, by the
physical assemblage of brute force piled up in the narrow corridors of
the Persian Gulf and, more so, by the dire warning issued by British
Prime Minister Tony Blair in response to the Iranian seizure if 15
British sailors.
Yet no sooner had Blair threatened to take the issue to "the next
phase" than his foreign secretary tried damage control by mollifying
his statement and putting the emphasis on "back-door channels".
The latter, it turns out, includes the Turkish government, which has
jumped at the opportunity to prove Turkey's value to Europe as a
bridge to the Muslim Middle East by offering to mediate in the
standoff and to inspect the seized sailors. Should Turkey achieve a
breakthrough in this unfolding "dangerous" crisis, the ramifications
with respect to its bid to join the European Union will be huge.
Simultaneously, there are other reasons to expect a prominent role for
Turkey, given a growing expressed desire in Iran for a "prisoners'
exchange" and the fact that at least one, and perhaps as many as five,
Iranians apprehended by the US were abducted in Turkey. Others,
including some diplomats, were abducted from Iraq.
As a result, if Turkey is to be instrumental in resolving the
Iran-British crisis, its leadership must do so with an eye toward an
exchange of prisoners. Turkey's failure, on the other hand, will
probably cast a large cloud over an Iraq security summit that is
scheduled to take place in Istanbul in April. Among others,
representatives from the US and Iran are due to meet.
All signs indicate that with the exception of the sole female sailor,
the release of the other 14 captives is not imminent, no matter how
tough Blair's rhetoric or the pressures exerted by the British
government and the EU.
Various Iranian politicians, including a powerful member of parliament
(Majlis), Mohammad Reza Bahonar, have stated that London should not
expect Iran to ignore the violation of Iran's sovereignty lightly.
Iran's embassy in London, contradicting the British claim that the
sailors were in Iraqi waters, has issued a statement that puts the
sailors half a mile inside Iranian territorial waters.
Such categorical statements by both sides invite a lengthy standoff
and tie the hands of those in Iran who may wish a quick end to this
controversy. This is particularly so in light of the economic pinch
caused by the British government's freeze on bilateral trade with Iran
(worth some US$2 billion). Should Iran make good on its threat to
begin legal proceedings against the sailors, the EU may follow suit
and penalize Iran where it hurts most - on the trade and economic
front.
Gains and losses for Iran
According to an Iranian political analyst seasoned in "threat
analysis", Iran's ability to play hardball with Britain serves the
national interest at a time when Western powers manipulate the Middle
East landscape almost at will. "Iran is sending a clear message that
the 'buck stops here'," he told the author.
Apparently, the message is not lost on Iran's neighbors, and at the
opening ceremony of an Arab summit in Riyadh, Saudi King Abdullah
warned "foreign powers" to stop meddling in the affairs of the region,
since the days when they could impose their wills on the people of the
region had passed.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was invited to the Arab
summit at the last moment and only after the outbreak of the crisis
over the British sailors. In fact, on the eve of the summit, Libyan
leader Muammar Gaddafi declined to attend and sent a message that he
would refuse to participate in an "anti-Iran" spectacle aimed at
pitting "Sunnis versus Shi'ites". Both Iranian and Arab papers have
reported on the recent meeting of US officials with the intelligence
chiefs of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Saudi Arabia
over forming a new anti-Iran network.
Clearly, Tehran's row with London has had immediate dividends with
respect to Iran's regional clout, causing pro-Iran sympathies in the
Arab world. Arabs now see in Iran's "heroic" standing up to "Western
imperialists" a source of much-needed inspiration and hope, in
contrast to their own feckless leadership. "The Arabs of the Persian
Gulf are now less inclined to join the US and Israel against Iran than
they were a mere week ago," a former Iranian diplomat told the author.
Rising oil prices (more than $65 a barrel) due to the crisis represent
yet another windfall that compensates to some extent for the economic
losses caused by Europe's backlash. Iran's "calculated escalation" has
not only helped lift nationalist spirits in Iran, it has also bridged
the gaps between the nuclear crisis and the Iraq crisis. It has served
as a sort of catalytic convergence of what had hitherto been regarded
as discrete issues, serving notice on their interconnections and thus
putting a premium on the omnibus of punitive measures against Iran.
Simultaneously, the combined US maneuvers and London's fiery rhetoric
against Iran have made Moscow and Beijing realize the explosive nature
of the situation, inducing them to draw a red line on their support
for the United States' designs against Iran.
Thus, in their joint statement in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin and
Chinese President Hu Jintao warned the US against making any military
moves on Iran. The United States' painstakingly assembled
international coalition against Iran at the United Nations has now
been put to severe new tests. It is far from clear that, by the time
the Security Council meets again some two months from now to consider
the Iran nuclear crisis, the coalition will even be intact.
On the negative side, Iran's nuclear diplomacy may suffer as a result
of the current tussle with Britain, by alienating the EU and thus
depriving Iran of an important venue to seek a diplomatic resolution
of the nuclear crisis.
Iran's preference is to re-engage the EU in direct talks and by
indirectly convincing the US that it should give a nod to another
round of Iran-EU nuclear talks. This strategy hinges, however, on
Iran's ability to nuance the dispute with London over the sailors in a
purely legal and procedural channel that would somehow insulate its
nuclear diplomacy (as much as possible).
Whether or not this is likely or, obversely, we will witness the
unintended consequences of a mini-crisis run wild after Blair's
threat, remains to be seen.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New
Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of
"Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs,
Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also
wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International
Review, and is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus
Fiction.
Mar 30, 2007
Iran ahead of the game - for now
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
"The US is not escalating tensions with Iran," said a Pentagon
spokesperson in reference to the major US naval exercise in Persian
Gulf "off the coast of Iran", per the wire reports. That is, a hair
stretch beyond Iran's 12-nautical-mile territorial waters.
The Iranians can be excused if they think otherwise - that the purpose
of the massive US maneuver at their doorstep, involving two
aircraft-carrier task forces and some 10,000 troops, is to send a
"strong signal" to them about the price they may have to pay if they
persist in defying the will of US power and its allies. This is not to
mention a French aircraft carrier making a solidarity appearance in
Persian Gulf waters at the same time, thus adding to the overall
Western menace with regard to Iran.
As usual, the US double-speak has continued unabated. Thus, precisely
at a time when the overwhelming weight of US firepower is put on full
display against the Iranians, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has
expressed the his country's readiness to engage in "high-level"
dialogue with Iran, as if to make a small dent in any Iranian paranoia
about the military intentions of the United States.
Gates' small words of comfort have been overshadowed, however, by the
physical assemblage of brute force piled up in the narrow corridors of
the Persian Gulf and, more so, by the dire warning issued by British
Prime Minister Tony Blair in response to the Iranian seizure if 15
British sailors.
Yet no sooner had Blair threatened to take the issue to "the next
phase" than his foreign secretary tried damage control by mollifying
his statement and putting the emphasis on "back-door channels".
The latter, it turns out, includes the Turkish government, which has
jumped at the opportunity to prove Turkey's value to Europe as a
bridge to the Muslim Middle East by offering to mediate in the
standoff and to inspect the seized sailors. Should Turkey achieve a
breakthrough in this unfolding "dangerous" crisis, the ramifications
with respect to its bid to join the European Union will be huge.
Simultaneously, there are other reasons to expect a prominent role for
Turkey, given a growing expressed desire in Iran for a "prisoners'
exchange" and the fact that at least one, and perhaps as many as five,
Iranians apprehended by the US were abducted in Turkey. Others,
including some diplomats, were abducted from Iraq.
As a result, if Turkey is to be instrumental in resolving the
Iran-British crisis, its leadership must do so with an eye toward an
exchange of prisoners. Turkey's failure, on the other hand, will
probably cast a large cloud over an Iraq security summit that is
scheduled to take place in Istanbul in April. Among others,
representatives from the US and Iran are due to meet.
All signs indicate that with the exception of the sole female sailor,
the release of the other 14 captives is not imminent, no matter how
tough Blair's rhetoric or the pressures exerted by the British
government and the EU.
Various Iranian politicians, including a powerful member of parliament
(Majlis), Mohammad Reza Bahonar, have stated that London should not
expect Iran to ignore the violation of Iran's sovereignty lightly.
Iran's embassy in London, contradicting the British claim that the
sailors were in Iraqi waters, has issued a statement that puts the
sailors half a mile inside Iranian territorial waters.
Such categorical statements by both sides invite a lengthy standoff
and tie the hands of those in Iran who may wish a quick end to this
controversy. This is particularly so in light of the economic pinch
caused by the British government's freeze on bilateral trade with Iran
(worth some US$2 billion). Should Iran make good on its threat to
begin legal proceedings against the sailors, the EU may follow suit
and penalize Iran where it hurts most - on the trade and economic
front.
Gains and losses for Iran
According to an Iranian political analyst seasoned in "threat
analysis", Iran's ability to play hardball with Britain serves the
national interest at a time when Western powers manipulate the Middle
East landscape almost at will. "Iran is sending a clear message that
the 'buck stops here'," he told the author.
Apparently, the message is not lost on Iran's neighbors, and at the
opening ceremony of an Arab summit in Riyadh, Saudi King Abdullah
warned "foreign powers" to stop meddling in the affairs of the region,
since the days when they could impose their wills on the people of the
region had passed.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was invited to the Arab
summit at the last moment and only after the outbreak of the crisis
over the British sailors. In fact, on the eve of the summit, Libyan
leader Muammar Gaddafi declined to attend and sent a message that he
would refuse to participate in an "anti-Iran" spectacle aimed at
pitting "Sunnis versus Shi'ites". Both Iranian and Arab papers have
reported on the recent meeting of US officials with the intelligence
chiefs of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Saudi Arabia
over forming a new anti-Iran network.
Clearly, Tehran's row with London has had immediate dividends with
respect to Iran's regional clout, causing pro-Iran sympathies in the
Arab world. Arabs now see in Iran's "heroic" standing up to "Western
imperialists" a source of much-needed inspiration and hope, in
contrast to their own feckless leadership. "The Arabs of the Persian
Gulf are now less inclined to join the US and Israel against Iran than
they were a mere week ago," a former Iranian diplomat told the author.
Rising oil prices (more than $65 a barrel) due to the crisis represent
yet another windfall that compensates to some extent for the economic
losses caused by Europe's backlash. Iran's "calculated escalation" has
not only helped lift nationalist spirits in Iran, it has also bridged
the gaps between the nuclear crisis and the Iraq crisis. It has served
as a sort of catalytic convergence of what had hitherto been regarded
as discrete issues, serving notice on their interconnections and thus
putting a premium on the omnibus of punitive measures against Iran.
Simultaneously, the combined US maneuvers and London's fiery rhetoric
against Iran have made Moscow and Beijing realize the explosive nature
of the situation, inducing them to draw a red line on their support
for the United States' designs against Iran.
Thus, in their joint statement in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin and
Chinese President Hu Jintao warned the US against making any military
moves on Iran. The United States' painstakingly assembled
international coalition against Iran at the United Nations has now
been put to severe new tests. It is far from clear that, by the time
the Security Council meets again some two months from now to consider
the Iran nuclear crisis, the coalition will even be intact.
On the negative side, Iran's nuclear diplomacy may suffer as a result
of the current tussle with Britain, by alienating the EU and thus
depriving Iran of an important venue to seek a diplomatic resolution
of the nuclear crisis.
Iran's preference is to re-engage the EU in direct talks and by
indirectly convincing the US that it should give a nod to another
round of Iran-EU nuclear talks. This strategy hinges, however, on
Iran's ability to nuance the dispute with London over the sailors in a
purely legal and procedural channel that would somehow insulate its
nuclear diplomacy (as much as possible).
Whether or not this is likely or, obversely, we will witness the
unintended consequences of a mini-crisis run wild after Blair's
threat, remains to be seen.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New
Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of
"Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs,
Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also
wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International
Review, and is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus
Fiction.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Gwynn Dyer: Iran-How to Start a War
Not only is the suggestion that the US would have fired on the Iranians provocative but the US has already created a provocation by raiding the quasi-consulate in Irbil and almost getting into a firefight with Kurds at the Irbil airport when they attempted to apprehend another Iranian. The Iranians have already made it clear that they may boycott the upcoming conference on Iraq security if the Iranians are not released. The Iraq government has called for their release but where is the new coverage and outrage about the US provocation? It is the arrest of Britons in disputed waters that causes all the chatter in the media.
Iran — How To Start A War
By Gwynne Dyer
03/30/07 "Jordan Times" -- - -“I don’t want to second-guess the British after the fact,” said US Navy Lieutenant-Commander Erik Horner, “but our rules of engagement allow a little more latitude. Our boarding team’s training is a little bit more towards self-preservation.”
Does that mean that one of his American boarding teams would have opened fire if it had been them in the two inflatable boats that were surrounded by Iranian Revolutionary Guard fast patrol boats off the coast of Iraq last Friday?
“Agreed. Yes.”
Just as well that it was a British boarding team, then. The 15 British sailors and Marines who were captured and taken to Tehran for “questioning” last week are undoubtedly having an unpleasant time, but they are alive, and Britain is only involved in two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan. If it had been one of Eriik Horner’s boarding teams, they would all be dead, and the United States and Iran would now be at war.
Horner is the executive officer of the USS Underwood, the American frigate that works together with HMS Cornwall, the British ship that the captive boarding party came from. Interviewed after the incident by Terri Judd of The Independent, the only British print journalist on HMS Cornwall, he was obviously struggling to be polite about the gutless Brits, but he wasn’t having much success.
“The US navy rules of engagement say we have not only a right to self-defence but also an obligation to self-defence,” Horner explained. “(The British) had every right in my mind and every justification to defend themselves rather than allow themselves to be taken. Our reaction was, Why didn’t your guys defend themselves?”
So there they are, eight sailors and seven Marines in two rubber boats, with personal weapons and no protection whatever, sitting about 30cm above the water, surrounded by six or seven Iranian attack boats with mounted machineguns. “Defend yourself” by opening fire, and after a single long burst from half a dozen heavy machineguns there will be 14 dead young men and one dead young woman in two rapidly sinking inflatables, and your country will be at war. Seems a bit pointless, really.
It’s a cultural thing, at bottom. Britain has a long history of fighting wars and taking casualties, but the combat doctrines are less hairy chested. British rules of engagement “are very much de-escalatory, because we don’t want wars starting”, explained Admiral Sir Alan West, former First Sea Lord.
“Rather than roaring into action and sinking everything in sight we try to step back, and that, of course, is why our chaps were... able to be captured and taken away.”
That emollient British approach is probably why the Iranian Revolutionary Guard chose to grab British troops rather than Americans. It was obviously a snatch operation: the Iranians would not normally have half-a-dozen attack boats ready to go even if some “coalition” boat checking Iraq-bound ships for contraband did stray across the invisible dividing line into Iranian waters (which the British insist they didn’t).
But it was not necessarily an operation ordered from the top of Iran’s government. In fact, there is no single source of authority in Iran’s curious system of “multiple governments”, as one observer labelled the impenetrably complex division of responsibilities and powers between elected civilians and unelected mullahs. The Revolutionary Guards (who are quite different from the regular armed forces) enjoy considerable autonomy within this system.
According to the US authorities in Iraq, the five Iranian diplomats arrested by US troops in a raid in Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan last January were actually Revolutionary Guards, and it would seem that their colleagues want them back. Kidnapping American troops as hostages for an exchange could cause a war, so they decided to grab some Brits instead. And it will probably work, after a certain delay.
In this episode, the American reputation for belligerence served US troops well, diverting Iranian attention to the British instead. In the larger scheme of things, it is a bit more problematic.
A quite similar snatch operation against the equally belligerent Israelis last July led to a monthlong Israeli aerial bombardment of Lebanon and a retaliatory hail of Hizbollah rockets on northern Israeli cities. Well over a thousand people were dead by the end, although nothing was settled.
Any day now, a minor clash along Iraq’s land or sea frontier with Iran could kill some American troops and give President Bush an excuse to attack Iran, if he wants one — and he certainly seems to. If the Revolutionary Guards had got it wrong last Friday and attacked an American boarding party by mistake, he would have his excuse now, and bombs might already be falling on Iran. All the pieces are in place, and the war could start at any time.
The writer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
Iran — How To Start A War
By Gwynne Dyer
03/30/07 "Jordan Times" -- - -“I don’t want to second-guess the British after the fact,” said US Navy Lieutenant-Commander Erik Horner, “but our rules of engagement allow a little more latitude. Our boarding team’s training is a little bit more towards self-preservation.”
Does that mean that one of his American boarding teams would have opened fire if it had been them in the two inflatable boats that were surrounded by Iranian Revolutionary Guard fast patrol boats off the coast of Iraq last Friday?
“Agreed. Yes.”
Just as well that it was a British boarding team, then. The 15 British sailors and Marines who were captured and taken to Tehran for “questioning” last week are undoubtedly having an unpleasant time, but they are alive, and Britain is only involved in two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan. If it had been one of Eriik Horner’s boarding teams, they would all be dead, and the United States and Iran would now be at war.
Horner is the executive officer of the USS Underwood, the American frigate that works together with HMS Cornwall, the British ship that the captive boarding party came from. Interviewed after the incident by Terri Judd of The Independent, the only British print journalist on HMS Cornwall, he was obviously struggling to be polite about the gutless Brits, but he wasn’t having much success.
“The US navy rules of engagement say we have not only a right to self-defence but also an obligation to self-defence,” Horner explained. “(The British) had every right in my mind and every justification to defend themselves rather than allow themselves to be taken. Our reaction was, Why didn’t your guys defend themselves?”
So there they are, eight sailors and seven Marines in two rubber boats, with personal weapons and no protection whatever, sitting about 30cm above the water, surrounded by six or seven Iranian attack boats with mounted machineguns. “Defend yourself” by opening fire, and after a single long burst from half a dozen heavy machineguns there will be 14 dead young men and one dead young woman in two rapidly sinking inflatables, and your country will be at war. Seems a bit pointless, really.
It’s a cultural thing, at bottom. Britain has a long history of fighting wars and taking casualties, but the combat doctrines are less hairy chested. British rules of engagement “are very much de-escalatory, because we don’t want wars starting”, explained Admiral Sir Alan West, former First Sea Lord.
“Rather than roaring into action and sinking everything in sight we try to step back, and that, of course, is why our chaps were... able to be captured and taken away.”
That emollient British approach is probably why the Iranian Revolutionary Guard chose to grab British troops rather than Americans. It was obviously a snatch operation: the Iranians would not normally have half-a-dozen attack boats ready to go even if some “coalition” boat checking Iraq-bound ships for contraband did stray across the invisible dividing line into Iranian waters (which the British insist they didn’t).
But it was not necessarily an operation ordered from the top of Iran’s government. In fact, there is no single source of authority in Iran’s curious system of “multiple governments”, as one observer labelled the impenetrably complex division of responsibilities and powers between elected civilians and unelected mullahs. The Revolutionary Guards (who are quite different from the regular armed forces) enjoy considerable autonomy within this system.
According to the US authorities in Iraq, the five Iranian diplomats arrested by US troops in a raid in Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan last January were actually Revolutionary Guards, and it would seem that their colleagues want them back. Kidnapping American troops as hostages for an exchange could cause a war, so they decided to grab some Brits instead. And it will probably work, after a certain delay.
In this episode, the American reputation for belligerence served US troops well, diverting Iranian attention to the British instead. In the larger scheme of things, it is a bit more problematic.
A quite similar snatch operation against the equally belligerent Israelis last July led to a monthlong Israeli aerial bombardment of Lebanon and a retaliatory hail of Hizbollah rockets on northern Israeli cities. Well over a thousand people were dead by the end, although nothing was settled.
Any day now, a minor clash along Iraq’s land or sea frontier with Iran could kill some American troops and give President Bush an excuse to attack Iran, if he wants one — and he certainly seems to. If the Revolutionary Guards had got it wrong last Friday and attacked an American boarding party by mistake, he would have his excuse now, and bombs might already be falling on Iran. All the pieces are in place, and the war could start at any time.
The writer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
Incident at Iranian consulate in Basra
Who knows what happened. There are no reports from reporters at the scene it seems.
Iran is probably fortunate this is a UK controlled area. The US would probably invade the consulate and take the staff prisoners as at Irbil.
Britain denies troops surrounded Iranian consulate in Basra and fired shots
The Associated PressPublished: March 29, 2007
BAGHDAD: At a critical period in the crisis over Iran's seizure of 15 British sailors and marines, the Iranian consul in Basra charged that British soldiers on Thursday had surrounded his office in the southern city and fired shots into the air. Britain denied the allegation.
The Ministry of Defense in London said the shooting was an exchange of gunfire after British troops on a foot patrol near the Iranian consulate were ambushed.
But Iranian Consul-General Mohammed Ridha Nasir Baghban said British forces had engaged in a "provocative act" that "could worsen the situation of the British sailors."
"British forces should rely on wisdom and not react because of the British forces' detention. This reflects negatively on bilateral relations," Baghban told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
Baghban claimed British forces surrounded the consulate about 10:00 a.m. and fired randomly into the air.
Iran is probably fortunate this is a UK controlled area. The US would probably invade the consulate and take the staff prisoners as at Irbil.
Britain denies troops surrounded Iranian consulate in Basra and fired shots
The Associated PressPublished: March 29, 2007
BAGHDAD: At a critical period in the crisis over Iran's seizure of 15 British sailors and marines, the Iranian consul in Basra charged that British soldiers on Thursday had surrounded his office in the southern city and fired shots into the air. Britain denied the allegation.
The Ministry of Defense in London said the shooting was an exchange of gunfire after British troops on a foot patrol near the Iranian consulate were ambushed.
But Iranian Consul-General Mohammed Ridha Nasir Baghban said British forces had engaged in a "provocative act" that "could worsen the situation of the British sailors."
"British forces should rely on wisdom and not react because of the British forces' detention. This reflects negatively on bilateral relations," Baghban told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
Baghban claimed British forces surrounded the consulate about 10:00 a.m. and fired randomly into the air.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Tension between Britain and Iran increases
As the article mentions many in the UK media do not think that Blair has heightened the confrontation enough. If the US had been involved the situation could have been out of control from the start. Perhaps that is what the US hoped for. Again as the article mentions the US would fire. You have a large US and UK fleet in war game exercises right near Iraqi waters, an invitation for an incident real or imagined.
Although Iran claims the detention has nothing to do with the US capture or Iranians in Irbil from a quasi consulate it would seem natural to take it as such.
Britain heightens confrontation with Iran over detained sailors
Fri, 2007-03-30 01:50
By Peter Symonds – World Socialist Web Site
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 maneuvers 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 rumor—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.
- World Socialist Web Site -
Although Iran claims the detention has nothing to do with the US capture or Iranians in Irbil from a quasi consulate it would seem natural to take it as such.
Britain heightens confrontation with Iran over detained sailors
Fri, 2007-03-30 01:50
By Peter Symonds – World Socialist Web Site
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 maneuvers 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 rumor—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.
- World Socialist Web Site -
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Iranian TV broadcast video of sailors and marines.
The US and UK and wester media regularly showed pics of detained Iraqis and of course they showed photos of Hussein in degrading situations. I guess the lady was glad for a smoke break! I wonder if the navy instructs them to say what the captors want when captured? I expect the stories will change when they are returned as I am sure they will be eventually.
Iranian TV broadcasts video of detained British sailors, marines
Nasser Karimi
Canadian Press
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
CREDIT:
Faye Turney, 26, the only woman amongst the British navy personnel seized by Iran, appears in this image made from television, in footage broadcast by Al-Alam, an Arabic-language, Iranian state-run television station, in Tehran, Wednesday March 28, 2007. Wearing a white tunic and with a black headscarf draped loosely over her hair, Turney said "Obviously we trespassed". (AP/APTN/Courtesy of Al-Alam)
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iranian state TV showed video Wednesday of the 15 British sailors and marines who were seized last week, including a female captive who wore a white tunic and black head scarf, and said the British boats "had trespassed" into Iranian waters.
The British government protested Iran's broadcast of the captured crew as "completely unacceptable." The British military had earlier released what it called proof that its boats were in the territorial waters of Iraq - not Iran - when they were seized.
"Obviously we trespassed into their waters," British sailor Faye Turney said on the video broadcast by Al-Alam, an Arabic-language, Iranian state-run television station that is carried across the Middle East.
"They were very friendly and very hospitable, very thoughtful, nice people. They explained to us why we've been arrested, there was no harm, no aggression," she said.
Turney, 26, was shown eating with sailors and marines. At another point, she was seen sitting in a room with floral curtains, smoking a cigarette.
"My name is leading sailman Faye Turney. I come from England. I have served in Foxtrot 99. I've been in the navy for nine years," she said.
Turney was the only person to be shown speaking in the video.
It also showed what appeared to be a handwritten letter from Turney to her family. The letter said, in part, "I have written a letter to the Iranian people to apologize for us entering their waters."
The video showed a brief scene of what appeared to be the British crew sitting in an Iranian boat in open waters immediately after their capture.
Before the video was broadcast, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair said any showing of British personnel on TV would be a breach of the Geneva Conventions.
"It's completely unacceptable for these pictures to be shown on television," the British Foreign Office said in a statement after the broadcast. "There is no doubt our personnel were seized in Iraqi territorial waters."
The statement also demanded that British diplomats be given immediate access to them as a "prelude" to their release.
Britain earlier said it was freezing most contacts with Iran until it freed all the crew members.
Britain's military said its vessels were 1.7 nautical miles - about three kilometres - inside Iraqi waters when Iran seized the sailors and marines on Friday after they completed a search of a civilian vessel in the Iraqi part of the Shatt al-Arab waterway. The border between Iran and Iraq has been disputed for centuries.
Vice Admiral Charles Style told reporters that the Iranians had provided a position on Sunday - a location that he said was in Iraqi waters. By Tuesday, Iranian officials had given a revised position three km east, placing the British inside Iranian waters - a claim he said was not verified by global positioning system co-ordinates.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told The Associated Press in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that Turney would be released Wednesday or Thursday, and he suggested that the British vessels' alleged entry into Iranian waters may have been a mistake.
"This is a violation that just happened. It could be natural. They did not resist," he told AP.
"Today or tomorrow, the lady will be released," Mottaki said Wednesday on the sidelines of an Arab summit in the Saudi capital, referring to Turney, the only woman among the 15.
The Iranian Embassy in London also said: "We are confident that Iranian and British governments are capable of resolving this security case through their close contacts and co-operation."
© The Canadian Press 2007
Iranian TV broadcasts video of detained British sailors, marines
Nasser Karimi
Canadian Press
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
CREDIT:
Faye Turney, 26, the only woman amongst the British navy personnel seized by Iran, appears in this image made from television, in footage broadcast by Al-Alam, an Arabic-language, Iranian state-run television station, in Tehran, Wednesday March 28, 2007. Wearing a white tunic and with a black headscarf draped loosely over her hair, Turney said "Obviously we trespassed". (AP/APTN/Courtesy of Al-Alam)
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iranian state TV showed video Wednesday of the 15 British sailors and marines who were seized last week, including a female captive who wore a white tunic and black head scarf, and said the British boats "had trespassed" into Iranian waters.
The British government protested Iran's broadcast of the captured crew as "completely unacceptable." The British military had earlier released what it called proof that its boats were in the territorial waters of Iraq - not Iran - when they were seized.
"Obviously we trespassed into their waters," British sailor Faye Turney said on the video broadcast by Al-Alam, an Arabic-language, Iranian state-run television station that is carried across the Middle East.
"They were very friendly and very hospitable, very thoughtful, nice people. They explained to us why we've been arrested, there was no harm, no aggression," she said.
Turney, 26, was shown eating with sailors and marines. At another point, she was seen sitting in a room with floral curtains, smoking a cigarette.
"My name is leading sailman Faye Turney. I come from England. I have served in Foxtrot 99. I've been in the navy for nine years," she said.
Turney was the only person to be shown speaking in the video.
It also showed what appeared to be a handwritten letter from Turney to her family. The letter said, in part, "I have written a letter to the Iranian people to apologize for us entering their waters."
The video showed a brief scene of what appeared to be the British crew sitting in an Iranian boat in open waters immediately after their capture.
Before the video was broadcast, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair said any showing of British personnel on TV would be a breach of the Geneva Conventions.
"It's completely unacceptable for these pictures to be shown on television," the British Foreign Office said in a statement after the broadcast. "There is no doubt our personnel were seized in Iraqi territorial waters."
The statement also demanded that British diplomats be given immediate access to them as a "prelude" to their release.
Britain earlier said it was freezing most contacts with Iran until it freed all the crew members.
Britain's military said its vessels were 1.7 nautical miles - about three kilometres - inside Iraqi waters when Iran seized the sailors and marines on Friday after they completed a search of a civilian vessel in the Iraqi part of the Shatt al-Arab waterway. The border between Iran and Iraq has been disputed for centuries.
Vice Admiral Charles Style told reporters that the Iranians had provided a position on Sunday - a location that he said was in Iraqi waters. By Tuesday, Iranian officials had given a revised position three km east, placing the British inside Iranian waters - a claim he said was not verified by global positioning system co-ordinates.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told The Associated Press in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that Turney would be released Wednesday or Thursday, and he suggested that the British vessels' alleged entry into Iranian waters may have been a mistake.
"This is a violation that just happened. It could be natural. They did not resist," he told AP.
"Today or tomorrow, the lady will be released," Mottaki said Wednesday on the sidelines of an Arab summit in the Saudi capital, referring to Turney, the only woman among the 15.
The Iranian Embassy in London also said: "We are confident that Iranian and British governments are capable of resolving this security case through their close contacts and co-operation."
© The Canadian Press 2007
Pepe Escobar on the Capture of UK sailors
It seems that this could be a very dangerous game for Iran to play. It is true though that there has been almost no western criticism of the US nabbing Iranians in a quasi consular facility in Iraq and there has been no movement to release them. This also was a dangerous game that almost led to a shootout at Arbil (or Erbil?) airport with Kurds.
British pawns in an Iranian game
By Pepe Escobar
03/28/07 "Asia Times" - -- - The 15 British sailors and marines who were patrolling the Shatt-al-Arab - or Arvand Roud, as it is known in Iran - were not exactly indulging in a little bit of Rod Stewart ("I am sailing/stormy waters/to be with you/to be free"). They had their guns loaded. These would certainly have been fired against Iraqi smugglers - or, better yet, the Iraqi resistance, Sunni or Shi'ite. But suddenly the British were confronted not by Iraqi but by Iranian gunboats.
This correspondent has been to the Shatt-al-Arab. It's a busy and tricky waterway, to say the least. Iraqi fishing boats share the waters with Iranian patrol boats. From the Iraqi shore one can see the Iranian shore, flags aflutter. These remain extremely disputed waters. In 1975, a treaty was signed in Algiers between the shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein. The center of the river was supposed to be the border. Then Saddam invaded Iran in 1980. After the Iran-Iraq War that this sparked ended in 1988, and even after both Gulf wars, things remain perilously inconclusive: a new treaty still has not been signed.
The British are adamant that the sailors were in Iraqi waters checking for cars, not weapons, being smuggled. It's almost laughable that the Royal Navy should be reduced to finding dangerous Toyotas in the Persian Gulf. Some reports from Tehran claim the British were actually checking Iranian military preparations ahead of a possible confrontation with the US.
Western corporate media overwhelmingly take for granted that the British were in Iraqi or "international" waters (wrong: these are disputed Iran/Iraq waters). Tehran has accused the British of "blatant aggression" and reminded world public opinion "this is not the first time that Britain commits such illegal acts" (which is true). Tehran diplomats later suggested that the British might be charged with espionage (which is actually the case in Khuzestan province in Iran, conducted by US Special Forces).
Chess matters
The coverage of the sensitive Shatt-al-Arab incident in the Iranian press was quite a smash: initially there was none. Everything was closed for Nowrouz - the one-week Iranian New Year holiday. But this has not prevented radicalization.
Hardliners like the Republican Guards and the Basiji - Iran's volunteer Islamist militia - asked the government of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad not to release the sailors until the five Iranian diplomats arrested by the US in Iraq were freed. They also demanded that the new United Nations sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear program be scrapped. And all this was under the watchful eyes (and ears) of the US Navy's 5th Fleet in Bahrain.
Much of the Western press assumed Iran wanted Western hostages to exchange for the five Iranian diplomats, without ever questioning the Pentagon's illegal capture of the Iranians in the first place. Then the plot was amplified as an Ahmadinejad diversion tactic as the UN Security Council worked out a new resolution for more sanctions on Iran and as Russia told Tehran to come up with the outstanding money or the Bushehr nuclear plant it is building in Iran would not be finished.
The Shatt-al-Arab incident has been linked to an Iranian response to Washington's accusations that Tehran is helping Shi'ite militias with funds, weapons and training in Iraq. For the record, Iran's ambassador in Iraq, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, said there is absolutely no connection: "They entered Iranian territorial waters and were arrested. It has nothing to do with other issues." Not surprisingly, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari had to take the side of the occupiers who installed him in his post: he said the British were in Iraq invited by the Iraqi government and were operating in Iraqi waters.
This doesn't stop people, especially in the Islamic world, questioning what business the British, as an occupation force, had in the Shatt-al-Arab to start with.
From the depths of their abysmal, recent historical experience, even the Arab world - which is not so fond of Persians - sees the US-orchestrated UN sanctions on Iran for what they are: the West, once again, trying to smash an independent nation daring to have its shot at more influence in the Middle East. More sanctions will be useless as China and India will continue to do serious business with Iran.
Tactically, as a backgammon or, better yet, chess move - in which Iranians excel - the Shatt-al-Arab incident may be much more clever than it appears. Oil is establishing itself well above US$60 a barrel as a result of the incident, and that's good for Iran. It's true that from London's point of view, the incident could have been arranged as a provocation, part of a mischievous plan to escalate the conflict with Iran and turn Western and possibly world public opinion against the regime.
But from Tehran's point of view, for all purposes British Prime Minister Tony Blair is a soft target. The episode has the potential to paralyze both President George W Bush and Blair. Neither can use the incident to start a war with Iran, although Blair has warned that his government is prepared to move to "a different phase" if Iran does not quickly release the sailors.
If the Tehran leadership decides to drag out the proceedings, the Shi'ites in southern Iraq, already exasperated by the British (as they were in the 1920s), may take the hint and accelerate a confrontation. Strands of the Shi'ite resistance may start merging with strands of the Sunni resistance (that's what Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has wanted all along). And this would prove once again that you don't need nuclear weapons when you excel at playing chess.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
British pawns in an Iranian game
By Pepe Escobar
03/28/07 "Asia Times" - -- - The 15 British sailors and marines who were patrolling the Shatt-al-Arab - or Arvand Roud, as it is known in Iran - were not exactly indulging in a little bit of Rod Stewart ("I am sailing/stormy waters/to be with you/to be free"). They had their guns loaded. These would certainly have been fired against Iraqi smugglers - or, better yet, the Iraqi resistance, Sunni or Shi'ite. But suddenly the British were confronted not by Iraqi but by Iranian gunboats.
This correspondent has been to the Shatt-al-Arab. It's a busy and tricky waterway, to say the least. Iraqi fishing boats share the waters with Iranian patrol boats. From the Iraqi shore one can see the Iranian shore, flags aflutter. These remain extremely disputed waters. In 1975, a treaty was signed in Algiers between the shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein. The center of the river was supposed to be the border. Then Saddam invaded Iran in 1980. After the Iran-Iraq War that this sparked ended in 1988, and even after both Gulf wars, things remain perilously inconclusive: a new treaty still has not been signed.
The British are adamant that the sailors were in Iraqi waters checking for cars, not weapons, being smuggled. It's almost laughable that the Royal Navy should be reduced to finding dangerous Toyotas in the Persian Gulf. Some reports from Tehran claim the British were actually checking Iranian military preparations ahead of a possible confrontation with the US.
Western corporate media overwhelmingly take for granted that the British were in Iraqi or "international" waters (wrong: these are disputed Iran/Iraq waters). Tehran has accused the British of "blatant aggression" and reminded world public opinion "this is not the first time that Britain commits such illegal acts" (which is true). Tehran diplomats later suggested that the British might be charged with espionage (which is actually the case in Khuzestan province in Iran, conducted by US Special Forces).
Chess matters
The coverage of the sensitive Shatt-al-Arab incident in the Iranian press was quite a smash: initially there was none. Everything was closed for Nowrouz - the one-week Iranian New Year holiday. But this has not prevented radicalization.
Hardliners like the Republican Guards and the Basiji - Iran's volunteer Islamist militia - asked the government of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad not to release the sailors until the five Iranian diplomats arrested by the US in Iraq were freed. They also demanded that the new United Nations sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear program be scrapped. And all this was under the watchful eyes (and ears) of the US Navy's 5th Fleet in Bahrain.
Much of the Western press assumed Iran wanted Western hostages to exchange for the five Iranian diplomats, without ever questioning the Pentagon's illegal capture of the Iranians in the first place. Then the plot was amplified as an Ahmadinejad diversion tactic as the UN Security Council worked out a new resolution for more sanctions on Iran and as Russia told Tehran to come up with the outstanding money or the Bushehr nuclear plant it is building in Iran would not be finished.
The Shatt-al-Arab incident has been linked to an Iranian response to Washington's accusations that Tehran is helping Shi'ite militias with funds, weapons and training in Iraq. For the record, Iran's ambassador in Iraq, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, said there is absolutely no connection: "They entered Iranian territorial waters and were arrested. It has nothing to do with other issues." Not surprisingly, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari had to take the side of the occupiers who installed him in his post: he said the British were in Iraq invited by the Iraqi government and were operating in Iraqi waters.
This doesn't stop people, especially in the Islamic world, questioning what business the British, as an occupation force, had in the Shatt-al-Arab to start with.
From the depths of their abysmal, recent historical experience, even the Arab world - which is not so fond of Persians - sees the US-orchestrated UN sanctions on Iran for what they are: the West, once again, trying to smash an independent nation daring to have its shot at more influence in the Middle East. More sanctions will be useless as China and India will continue to do serious business with Iran.
Tactically, as a backgammon or, better yet, chess move - in which Iranians excel - the Shatt-al-Arab incident may be much more clever than it appears. Oil is establishing itself well above US$60 a barrel as a result of the incident, and that's good for Iran. It's true that from London's point of view, the incident could have been arranged as a provocation, part of a mischievous plan to escalate the conflict with Iran and turn Western and possibly world public opinion against the regime.
But from Tehran's point of view, for all purposes British Prime Minister Tony Blair is a soft target. The episode has the potential to paralyze both President George W Bush and Blair. Neither can use the incident to start a war with Iran, although Blair has warned that his government is prepared to move to "a different phase" if Iran does not quickly release the sailors.
If the Tehran leadership decides to drag out the proceedings, the Shi'ites in southern Iraq, already exasperated by the British (as they were in the 1920s), may take the hint and accelerate a confrontation. Strands of the Shi'ite resistance may start merging with strands of the Sunni resistance (that's what Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has wanted all along). And this would prove once again that you don't need nuclear weapons when you excel at playing chess.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
A different perspective on the UK sailors incident.
This is quite an interesting perspective. It comes from this site. Since it is from the UK I assume it is members of the Ahwazi minority in exile. The military buildup by Iran in the area is obviously significant. They will be in a position to shut down shipping if there is an attack on Iran.
news
25 March, 2007
Kidnapping and Iran's militarisation of the Shatt al-Arab
Iran's capture of 15 British navy personnel at gunpoint on the Shatt al-Arab, purportedly in Iraqi waters, is inextricably linked to the regime's long-term ambition to impose its territorial control over the strategic waterway and hold Baghdad hostage to its interests.
The left bank of the Shatt al-Arab is witnessing a large-scale militarisation programme which is being conducted under the auspices of the Arvand Free Zone Organisation (AFZO), a state-run group that aims to extend the regime's economic, political and military influence over the Shatt al-Arab and ultimately Iraq. The AFZO's plans for the military-industrial zone were outlined in a letter issued to indigenous Ahwazi Arab residents living within the zone instructing them that their land would be confiscated (click here to download the BAFS report). The confiscation programme is nothing short of ethnic cleansing for the sake of Iran's neo-imperialism.
Arab Shia tribes have populated regions on both sides of the Shatt al-Arab for centuries if not millennia. The leaders of the Bani Kaab tribe owned land on both banks of the waterway, giving them considerable influence and political autonomy. Any foreign power wishing to gain influence over trade along the Shatt al-Arab had to deal with the Bani Kaab leadership, which controlled the Sheikhdom of Mohammara. The Ottomans confiscated the land belonging to the Bani Kaab in the 19th century and Reza Pahlavi deposed Sheikh Kazal, the de facto ruler of the oil-rich Arabistan region, following his military coup in 1925. Arabistan was renamed Khuzestan and Mohammara was renamed Khorramshahr. The area came to prominence in 1980, when Iraq invaded Khuzestan ostensibly to “liberate†the Ahwazi Arabs, although Saddam was no doubt taking advantage of Iran’s post-revolutionary turmoil to seize the region’s massive oilfields. The narrowness of the Shatt Al-Arab also enabled Iran and Iraq to stage large-scale amphibious assaults during the war. In February 1986, 30,000 Iranian troops crossed the Shatt Al-Arab in a surprise attack to invade and occupy Iraq's Al-Faw peninsula and create a bridgehead for further advances into Iraq.
The Marsh Arabs of Iraq's Basra province suffered ethnic cleansing and repression under Saddam's regime while in Iran the Ahwazi Arabs have endured violent persecution under the Pahlavi dynasty and the Islamic Republic. On both sides of the waterway, the governments of Iran and Iraq have viewed the indigenous population as disloyal and a threat to their territorial claims. They were perceived as a threat by Saddam because they are predominantly Shia, while the Iranian regime sees them as having innate pan-Arab sympathies. Ethnic cleansing has been used by both countries as a method of securing control and territorial claims over the Shatt al-Arab.
The AFZ is the latest development in the Iranian regime's campaign to rid the left bank of Ahwazi Arabs and impose Iranian control over the Shatt al-Arab. The latest seizure of British personnel is a symptom of this quiet militarisation programme. Land acquisition and ethnic cleansing are intimately bound up with militarisation. Over recent years, the Iranian regime has confiscated large tracts of land from local Arabs and transferred ownership to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and state-owned enterprises. Around 47,000 hectares of Ahwazi Arab farmland in the Jofir area near the Ahwazi city of Abadan has been transferred members of the security forces and government enterprises. More than 6,000 hectares of Ahwazi farmland north of Shush (Susa) has been taken to "resettle" the faithful non-indigenous Persians, following directives issued by the Ministry of Agricultures and the Revolutionary Guards Corp Command. These policies have forced Ahwazi Arabs into poor shanty towns.
The AFZ is located along the narrowest and most strategically sensitive part of the Shatt al-Arab and includes a large number of Revolutionary Guards naval posts, which are used to patrol the waterway and protect Iranian arms smugglers entering Iraq. It stretches 30km from Abadan along the Shatt Al-Arab to the land border between Basra and Khuzestan. The zone is in three segments: an island and adjacent land measuring 30 square km, a strip of land north of Khorramshahr measuring 25 square km and an in-land eastern segment measuring around 100 square km in area. The total land area of the Arvand Free Zone is around 155 square km and includes Arab towns and villages. At certain points, the zone is literally within a stone's throw of Basra.
The Shatt al-Arab is the most politically sensitive area of the Middle East. Whoever controls the waterway controls movements from Iraq to the Gulf, including oil shipments, as well as serving as an important trade route for the entire west of Iran. Control over the disputed waterway led to wars between the Persian and Ottoman empires in the 17th and 19th centuries and more recently Iraq and Iran.
The AFZ has seen the mass expulsion of Arabs, the destruction of their villages and the creation of an exclusive military-industrial zone. The expulsion campaign began with the Arab farmers located on Minoo Island, near Abadan (click here for information). The islanders were bullied by AFZO officials into giving up their land before the official deadline, indicating an increasing sense of urgency associated with establishing the zone. In all, up to 500,000 indigenous Ahwazi Arabs are being displaced by the creation of a 5,000 square km security zone, of which the AFZ is just a part, along the Shatt al-Arab.
The zone's security element has strengthened covert operations inside Iraq, with the objective of securing an early exit of Coalition troops, influencing Iraq's political system and using patronage to control local authorities in Basra. The zone is also being used to train, fund and organise militias loyal to Tehran. Mahdi Army leader Moqtada al-Sadr and several Iranian-backed politicians belonging to the ruling United Iraqi Alliance have recently visited the area.
Documents from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps' (IRGC) Fajr Garrison in Khuzestan, which serves as the organisation's main headquarters for southern Iran, show that Tehran is employing up to 40,000 agents in Iraq. The information was first revealed in March 2005 by former Iranian agents who defected due to pay cuts and subsequently confirmed by Coalition troops in Iraq. Fajr Garrison hosts the IRGC's Qods Force, which runs the vast underground network in Iraq. Agents are paid by middle-men, who carry out regular visits to Ahwaz City to obtain payments and be debriefed by Qods commanders.
The regime's activities in Khuzestan and the left bank of the Shatt al-Arab are related to the rise of militias in Basra and the British government's discovery that weapons used by insurgents were likely to have originated from the IRGC via the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah. It is no coincidence that attacks on British troops, a sudden upsurge in militia activity in Basra province and the seizing of British naval personnel on the Shatt al-Arab have occurred at the same time as Ahwazi Arabs are being removed from the area to make way for the AFZ. Greater international attention to the plight of the Ahwazi Arabs would hinder the pace of militarisation along the Shatt al-Arab and stymie Iranian efforts to control Iraq.
news
25 March, 2007
Kidnapping and Iran's militarisation of the Shatt al-Arab
Iran's capture of 15 British navy personnel at gunpoint on the Shatt al-Arab, purportedly in Iraqi waters, is inextricably linked to the regime's long-term ambition to impose its territorial control over the strategic waterway and hold Baghdad hostage to its interests.
The left bank of the Shatt al-Arab is witnessing a large-scale militarisation programme which is being conducted under the auspices of the Arvand Free Zone Organisation (AFZO), a state-run group that aims to extend the regime's economic, political and military influence over the Shatt al-Arab and ultimately Iraq. The AFZO's plans for the military-industrial zone were outlined in a letter issued to indigenous Ahwazi Arab residents living within the zone instructing them that their land would be confiscated (click here to download the BAFS report). The confiscation programme is nothing short of ethnic cleansing for the sake of Iran's neo-imperialism.
Arab Shia tribes have populated regions on both sides of the Shatt al-Arab for centuries if not millennia. The leaders of the Bani Kaab tribe owned land on both banks of the waterway, giving them considerable influence and political autonomy. Any foreign power wishing to gain influence over trade along the Shatt al-Arab had to deal with the Bani Kaab leadership, which controlled the Sheikhdom of Mohammara. The Ottomans confiscated the land belonging to the Bani Kaab in the 19th century and Reza Pahlavi deposed Sheikh Kazal, the de facto ruler of the oil-rich Arabistan region, following his military coup in 1925. Arabistan was renamed Khuzestan and Mohammara was renamed Khorramshahr. The area came to prominence in 1980, when Iraq invaded Khuzestan ostensibly to “liberate†the Ahwazi Arabs, although Saddam was no doubt taking advantage of Iran’s post-revolutionary turmoil to seize the region’s massive oilfields. The narrowness of the Shatt Al-Arab also enabled Iran and Iraq to stage large-scale amphibious assaults during the war. In February 1986, 30,000 Iranian troops crossed the Shatt Al-Arab in a surprise attack to invade and occupy Iraq's Al-Faw peninsula and create a bridgehead for further advances into Iraq.
The Marsh Arabs of Iraq's Basra province suffered ethnic cleansing and repression under Saddam's regime while in Iran the Ahwazi Arabs have endured violent persecution under the Pahlavi dynasty and the Islamic Republic. On both sides of the waterway, the governments of Iran and Iraq have viewed the indigenous population as disloyal and a threat to their territorial claims. They were perceived as a threat by Saddam because they are predominantly Shia, while the Iranian regime sees them as having innate pan-Arab sympathies. Ethnic cleansing has been used by both countries as a method of securing control and territorial claims over the Shatt al-Arab.
The AFZ is the latest development in the Iranian regime's campaign to rid the left bank of Ahwazi Arabs and impose Iranian control over the Shatt al-Arab. The latest seizure of British personnel is a symptom of this quiet militarisation programme. Land acquisition and ethnic cleansing are intimately bound up with militarisation. Over recent years, the Iranian regime has confiscated large tracts of land from local Arabs and transferred ownership to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and state-owned enterprises. Around 47,000 hectares of Ahwazi Arab farmland in the Jofir area near the Ahwazi city of Abadan has been transferred members of the security forces and government enterprises. More than 6,000 hectares of Ahwazi farmland north of Shush (Susa) has been taken to "resettle" the faithful non-indigenous Persians, following directives issued by the Ministry of Agricultures and the Revolutionary Guards Corp Command. These policies have forced Ahwazi Arabs into poor shanty towns.
The AFZ is located along the narrowest and most strategically sensitive part of the Shatt al-Arab and includes a large number of Revolutionary Guards naval posts, which are used to patrol the waterway and protect Iranian arms smugglers entering Iraq. It stretches 30km from Abadan along the Shatt Al-Arab to the land border between Basra and Khuzestan. The zone is in three segments: an island and adjacent land measuring 30 square km, a strip of land north of Khorramshahr measuring 25 square km and an in-land eastern segment measuring around 100 square km in area. The total land area of the Arvand Free Zone is around 155 square km and includes Arab towns and villages. At certain points, the zone is literally within a stone's throw of Basra.
The Shatt al-Arab is the most politically sensitive area of the Middle East. Whoever controls the waterway controls movements from Iraq to the Gulf, including oil shipments, as well as serving as an important trade route for the entire west of Iran. Control over the disputed waterway led to wars between the Persian and Ottoman empires in the 17th and 19th centuries and more recently Iraq and Iran.
The AFZ has seen the mass expulsion of Arabs, the destruction of their villages and the creation of an exclusive military-industrial zone. The expulsion campaign began with the Arab farmers located on Minoo Island, near Abadan (click here for information). The islanders were bullied by AFZO officials into giving up their land before the official deadline, indicating an increasing sense of urgency associated with establishing the zone. In all, up to 500,000 indigenous Ahwazi Arabs are being displaced by the creation of a 5,000 square km security zone, of which the AFZ is just a part, along the Shatt al-Arab.
The zone's security element has strengthened covert operations inside Iraq, with the objective of securing an early exit of Coalition troops, influencing Iraq's political system and using patronage to control local authorities in Basra. The zone is also being used to train, fund and organise militias loyal to Tehran. Mahdi Army leader Moqtada al-Sadr and several Iranian-backed politicians belonging to the ruling United Iraqi Alliance have recently visited the area.
Documents from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps' (IRGC) Fajr Garrison in Khuzestan, which serves as the organisation's main headquarters for southern Iran, show that Tehran is employing up to 40,000 agents in Iraq. The information was first revealed in March 2005 by former Iranian agents who defected due to pay cuts and subsequently confirmed by Coalition troops in Iraq. Fajr Garrison hosts the IRGC's Qods Force, which runs the vast underground network in Iraq. Agents are paid by middle-men, who carry out regular visits to Ahwaz City to obtain payments and be debriefed by Qods commanders.
The regime's activities in Khuzestan and the left bank of the Shatt al-Arab are related to the rise of militias in Basra and the British government's discovery that weapons used by insurgents were likely to have originated from the IRGC via the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah. It is no coincidence that attacks on British troops, a sudden upsurge in militia activity in Basra province and the seizing of British naval personnel on the Shatt al-Arab have occurred at the same time as Ahwazi Arabs are being removed from the area to make way for the AFZ. Greater international attention to the plight of the Ahwazi Arabs would hinder the pace of militarisation along the Shatt al-Arab and stymie Iranian efforts to control Iraq.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Iran capture of UK sailors retaliation for US raid?
This is from the Independent.
Immediately I saw about the Iranian capture I thought of the Erbil raid by the US. This escalation is dangerous. I wonder if the US will just leave the UK to react or if the US will up the ante.
American raid and arrests set scene for capture of marines
By Patrick Cockburn in Arbil
Published: 26 March 2007
At 3am on 11 January US military forces raided the Iranian liaison office in the Kurdish capital Arbil and detained five Iranian officials who are still prisoners.
The attack marked a significant escalation in the confrontation between the US and Iran.
Britain is inevitably involved in this as America's only important foreign ally in Iraq. In fact the US raid could have had even more significant consequences if the Americans had captured the Iranian official they were targeting. Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of the Kurdish president Massoud Barzani, told The Independent that "they were after Mohammed Jafari, the deputy chairman of Iran's National Security Council."
It is a measure of the difficulty America has in getting its close allies in Iraq, notably the Kurds, to join it in confronting Iran that Mr Jafari was in Arbil as part of an Iranian delegation. He had just visited Mr Barzani in his mountain-top headquarters at Salahudin and earlier he met with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in Dokan in eastern Kurdistan.
The political links between Iran and Iraq will be difficult to sever. Most Iraqi political leaders, Arab or Kurdish, were exiles in Iran or in Syria. They are also conscious that one day the US will withdraw from Iraq but Iran will always be there.
Some businessmen in Arbil scent profitable opportunities as the UN tightens its embargo on trade with Iran, announced at the weekend by the UN. As official trade is squeezed, they foresee remunerative possibilities for smuggling goods in and out of Iran.
Economically, northern Iraq needs Iran more than Iran needs it. Iranian petrol commands a premium price because it is considered pure and Kurdistan is eager to increase its supply of electricity, of which it is permanently short, from Iran.
In terms of US domestic and international politics, an American confrontation with Iran on the nuclear issue probably makes sense. Washington can rally support against Iran in a way that it cannot do when it looks for support for its occupation of Iraq. Seeing the US bogged down in Iraq, the Iranians may have overplaying their hand in developing nuclear power.
Inside Iraq, confrontation with Iran does not make much political sense. All America's allies in Iraq have close ties with Iran. The only anti-Iranian community in Iraq is the five million Sunni who have been fighting the US for the past four years.
The US raid on Arbil in January would have had far more serious consequences if Mr Jafari had been abducted. As it was, the seizure of five Iranian officials seems to have set the scene for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards seizing 15 British sailors and marines.
Immediately I saw about the Iranian capture I thought of the Erbil raid by the US. This escalation is dangerous. I wonder if the US will just leave the UK to react or if the US will up the ante.
American raid and arrests set scene for capture of marines
By Patrick Cockburn in Arbil
Published: 26 March 2007
At 3am on 11 January US military forces raided the Iranian liaison office in the Kurdish capital Arbil and detained five Iranian officials who are still prisoners.
The attack marked a significant escalation in the confrontation between the US and Iran.
Britain is inevitably involved in this as America's only important foreign ally in Iraq. In fact the US raid could have had even more significant consequences if the Americans had captured the Iranian official they were targeting. Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of the Kurdish president Massoud Barzani, told The Independent that "they were after Mohammed Jafari, the deputy chairman of Iran's National Security Council."
It is a measure of the difficulty America has in getting its close allies in Iraq, notably the Kurds, to join it in confronting Iran that Mr Jafari was in Arbil as part of an Iranian delegation. He had just visited Mr Barzani in his mountain-top headquarters at Salahudin and earlier he met with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in Dokan in eastern Kurdistan.
The political links between Iran and Iraq will be difficult to sever. Most Iraqi political leaders, Arab or Kurdish, were exiles in Iran or in Syria. They are also conscious that one day the US will withdraw from Iraq but Iran will always be there.
Some businessmen in Arbil scent profitable opportunities as the UN tightens its embargo on trade with Iran, announced at the weekend by the UN. As official trade is squeezed, they foresee remunerative possibilities for smuggling goods in and out of Iran.
Economically, northern Iraq needs Iran more than Iran needs it. Iranian petrol commands a premium price because it is considered pure and Kurdistan is eager to increase its supply of electricity, of which it is permanently short, from Iran.
In terms of US domestic and international politics, an American confrontation with Iran on the nuclear issue probably makes sense. Washington can rally support against Iran in a way that it cannot do when it looks for support for its occupation of Iraq. Seeing the US bogged down in Iraq, the Iranians may have overplaying their hand in developing nuclear power.
Inside Iraq, confrontation with Iran does not make much political sense. All America's allies in Iraq have close ties with Iran. The only anti-Iranian community in Iraq is the five million Sunni who have been fighting the US for the past four years.
The US raid on Arbil in January would have had far more serious consequences if Mr Jafari had been abducted. As it was, the seizure of five Iranian officials seems to have set the scene for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards seizing 15 British sailors and marines.
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