Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Britain heightens confrontation with Iran over detained sailors

Peter Symonds | 29.03.2007 15:50

The Blair government, backed by the Bush administration, yesterday stepped up diplomatic pressure for the release of 15 British sailors and marines detained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRG) last Friday. In an already tense situation in the Persian Gulf, US aircraft carrier battle groups have held a major military exercise over the past two days, while British ministers in London called for Iran to be further diplomatically isolated.

In a statement to parliament, Prime Minister Tony Blair condemned Iran’s detention of the British naval personnel as “completely unacceptable, wrong and illegal”. He warned: “It is now time to ratchet up international and diplomatic pressure in order to make sure that the Iranian government understands their total isolation on this issue.”

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett announced that Britain had frozen bilateral talks with Iran on all other issues until the sailors were returned. The Foreign Office denounced footage shown on Iranian television of some of the detainees as “completely unacceptable”. During the TV segment, female sailor Faye Turney acknowledged that the British boats had “trespassed” into Iranian waters and said the detainees were being well-treated.

Vice Admiral Charles Style told a press conference that Britain “unambiguously contests” Iranian assertions that the sailors were inside Iranian waters. He produced charts, photographs and previously undisclosed navigational coordinates, purportedly showing that the sailors were about 3 kilometres inside Iraqi waters. He claimed that Iran had produced two conflicting sets of coordinates during secret diplomatic discussions.

British “proof” that its sailors were “ambushed” inside Iraqi territorial waters cannot be taken at face value any more than Iran’s “substantial evidence” to the contrary. The area of the Persian Gulf near the Shatt al-Arab waterway—the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers—has long been the subject of dispute between Iraq and Iran. “If this happened south of where the river boundary ends, knowing the coordinates wouldn’t necessarily help us,” Robert Schofield of King’s College, an expert on the waterway, explained to Associated Press.

More significant than the dispute over naval co-ordinates is the political context. The incident took place as the US, with British backing, intensified the pressure on Iran over its nuclear programs, its alleged supply of weapons to anti-occupation insurgents in Iraq and claims that Tehran is supporting “terrorism” throughout the Middle East. The US navy has doubled the size of its fleet, stationing two aircraft carrier groups in the area for the first time since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Pentagon has also sent Patriot anti-missile batteries to the Gulf States and mine-sweepers to the Persian Gulf.

The British navy too has doubled its presence in the Gulf since last October. The extra warships included the HMS Cornwall, which dispatched the two light craft seized last Friday by Iranian forces.

The military build up is clearly aimed against Iran. Captain Bradley Johanson, commander of the USS John C. Stennis, told the press: “If there is a strong [American] presence, then it sends a clear message that you better be careful about trying to intimidate others. Iran has adopted a very escalatory posture with the things that they have done.” The Bush administration’s own “escalatory posture” was evident during the past two days of war games, as 15 warships and more than 100 warplanes practiced manoeuvres and attacks not far from the Iranian coastline.

According to several press reports, the Pentagon may well have accelerated the planned exercise in response to the detention of the British sailors. A senior US military official in Bahrain told ABC News that the huge show of force was “a clear effort” to send a message to Iran. US naval officials said the operation was “hastily planned” after the 15 Britons were seized Friday. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino yesterday denied any connection, saying: “There is no escalation of tensions on our part.”

International investors are certainly concerned about the sharpening tensions. As Reuters noted: “US naval exercises in the Gulf have rattled global financial markets, sending oil prices higher and contributing to declines in stock prices. Markets got a jolt late on Tuesday by a rumour—which proved unfounded—of a clash between Iran and the US navy.”

The US and British naval build up in the Gulf is just one element of the US administration’s provocative stance against Iran, which included the imposition of tougher UN sanctions last Saturday. In January, President Bush declared that US forces in Iraq would “seek out and destroy” Iranian networks providing arms and other support to Shiite militias inside Iraq. On the same day, US special forces conducted an early morning raid on an Iranian diplomatic office in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil. The US military has detained five Iranian officials without charge for more than two months despite calls by the Iraqi government for their release.

The Irbil raid was a calculated US provocation which, as Washington was well aware, could produce a reaction. The British-based Telegraph confirmed this week that the CIA warned British intelligence chiefs that the arrests could result in reprisals, possibly against British troops in southern Iraq. “Although the CIA alert led to the United States raising its official security threat throughout the Middle East and elsewhere, Britain did not follow suit,” the article explained.

Several commentators have speculated that Iran may link the fate of the British sailors to the release of its officials held in Iraq—a claim that Iranian officials have denied. While the British and international media generally assume that the detention of the sailors is a calculated plot by Tehran, it cannot be ruled out that the incident was engineered in London or Washington. Veteran American journalist Seymour Hersh, among others, has alleged that US and Israeli intelligence agents are actively operating inside Iran.

The US-based Stratfor think tank, which has close links to the American intelligence and military establishment, headlined its article on the incident “Another step in the US-Iranian Covert War”. While uncertain about the motive for detaining the British sailors, the article indicated that it may be linked to Western intelligence operations inside Iran. It pointed to the alleged defection of a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard general Ali Reza Asghari earlier this year. He is reportedly being interrogated by US intelligence, including over Tehran’s knowledge of Western agents operating inside Iran.

According to Stratfor, “With this in mind, there have been recent indications from US and Israeli intelligence sources that the British MI6 was engaged in an operation to extract one of its agents from Iran, but a leak tipped MOIS [Iranian intelligence] off to the plan. According to an unconfirmed source, the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps] nabbed the British [MI6] personnel, as well as the agent, to use as a bargaining chip to secure the release of the five detained Iranians. If these negotiations go poorly for Iran, the Britons could very well be tried for espionage.”

Whatever the exact reasons for the seizure of the British sailors, the chief responsibility for their predicament rests with the Blair government and the Bush administration. The only reason for the presence of the British warships in waters disputed by Iraq and Iran is the illegal US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. Far from pulling out of Iraq, the White House is now menacing neighbouring Iran as part of broader US ambitions to dominate the oil-rich region.

It is in this dangerous political hothouse that a small incident involving the detention of British sailors can spiral out of control. Several right-wing British newspapers have already denounced the Blair government for failing to take tougher action against Iran. An editorial in the Times on Tuesday condemned “the pusillanimous timidity of British officials and politicians, who have failed disgracefully to confront Iran with the ultimatum this flagrant aggression demands”.

The Telegraph argued for intensified sanctions against Iran unless “it stops lying to us about the details of its nuclear program, to stop arming and directing insurgents in southern Iraq, and to stop violating Iraqi territorial waters.... We wait anxiously to see whether this weakened and discredited Prime Minister has the necessary spine to do what is required, or whether Britain will persist in presenting its weakest aspect to a potential enemy.”

To date, the Bush administration has kept a relatively low profile over the incident. However, Lieutenant Commander Erik Horner, second-in command of the USS Underwood in the Gulf, left no doubt about US reaction to a similar situation involving American sailors. “The unique US navy rules of engagement say we not only have the right to self-defence, but also an obligation to self-defence,” he said. Asked if his men would have fired on Iranian forces, he bluntly declared: “Agreed. Yes”.

In other words, the Bush administration has stationed a huge US naval presence in the Persian Gulf with rules of engagement that oblige US forces to respond to any incident—actual or imagined. Any clash could of course become the pretext for unleashing a devastating assault on Iran using the overwhelming US firepower now in place.

Peter Symonds

Comments

Display the following 9 comments

  1. selective arrests. — GPS
  2. Manufactured Crisis — Britain's "Gulf of Tonkin"
  3. It's a bullshit creation — dh
  4. it was contrived — dh
  5. GPS — Not Donald Rumsfled
  6. ... — Not Donald Rumsfled
  7. this is all to do — Bite
  8. You staring at my pint? — Not Donald Rumsfled
  9. Ex-(Flaklands)forces (duffers) discussing the situation — Not Donald Rumsfeld
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech