The Iranian Crisis: Standing Alone.
Since the abduction of fifteen British soldiers by Iran upon the pretence of them illegally entering into Iranian waters, a tense power play is now in session with two nations not wanting to lose face against the other. Which of these two powers will get their way, and how much force will be required to reach a solid conclusion?
In international relations a reputation for recklessness and disobedience has the advantage of making a nation’s potential reactions to a crisis difficult to accurately assess. Iran is one such place: a country governed by those who seek to disrupt and damage the actions of the West across the Middle East, largely indifferent toward any consequences.
More than this, because of Iraq, the British position is not as strong as it should be in negotiating the return of its military personnel. Past hostage situations have been met with words, inaction, and disastrous ends as a result. If the worst does indeed come to the worst, words and diplomacy may fail to tame Iran and get our soldiers back.
Many countries are treating the outcry now being made by the British government with strong indifference, precipitated by our shameful history in Iraq and the wide held belief that our forces have no business on the Shatt-al-Arab in the first place. Many may ponder whether Revolutionary Guards were not making an indirect tit-for-tat response to American seizures of Iranians in Iraq, perhaps even hoping for a hostage swap. Or perhaps just an angry reaction to the latest UN Security Council resolution about Iran’s nuclear programme - which was actually passed a day after the kidnapping, but its contents known beforehand.
Be this history as it may, and working on the assumption that British forces were indeed rightfully situated within Iraqi borders (after all, it should be noted that the initial evidence cited by Iran still placed our forces within Iraqi borders until they were later revised and ‘corrected’), the actions of Iran should not be tolerated for much longer.
Iran has displayed the captured personnel on television, a video in which there appears a worrying level of strain between the soldiers and possible coercion. The Foreign Office was correct in its almost instantaneous condemnation of the video’s release, stating that to display images of captured soldiers was completely unacceptable.
After all, the act breaches international and UN codes on the treatment of prisoners but, as we well know, Iran doesn’t have a propensity for taking heed of the United Nations.
To this end I feel little impact would be made in seeking an official statement of condescension toward Iran from the UN, as Tony Blair is seeking. Furthermore, recent news suggests that Iran has gone back on its release of Faye Turney due to Britain taking the issue to the UN Security Council and not taking the ‘right’ attitude with regard to the hostage situation.
Given the difficulties of dealing with the Iranian regime generally, and the dangerous volatility of the region, it is hard to fault the Government’s approach. It has tried the softly-softly; and has applied pressure more incrementally with regard to making the developments public. It has also avoided accusing Iran of violating Iraq’s territorial waters (which is a logical conclusion to be drawn), lest a British-Iranian dispute escalates into a new Iran-Iraq war.
The sad truth is that Britain is not in a strong position. Whatever the complexities of the boundaries involved and the position in international law, the reality is that Iran holds 15 British sailors and, with them, most of the cards. Iran also has oil, and contempt for international opinion that means any threat of further isolation will have only a limited effect.
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Bit of a pickle aint it.