They should have known the Iranians might spring a trap. Several months before
the current hostage crisis a small group of American and Iraqi soldiers had
been patrolling near the Iranian border 75 miles east of Baghdad.
They spotted a single Iranian soldier lurking in Iraqi territory near the town
of Balad Ruz and moved forward to question him. The Americans were,
according to a US army report obtained by The Sunday Times, promptly
ambushed by a much larger platoon of Iranian soldiers who had been hiding
across the nearby border.
An Iranian captain warned the Americans that “if they tried to leave their
location, the Iranians would fire upon them”. For a few moments the US
paratroopers must have felt as helpless as the British sailors in inflatable
speedboats who were surprised 10 days ago by more heavily armed Iranian
vessels.
The US incident last September ended very differently. Firing broke out. Both
sides scattered and a potential hostage crisis was averted as the Americans
escaped unhurt.
By contrast, the 14 British service-men and one woman proved humiliatingly
vulnerable to a low-tech Iranian naval manoeuvre that has provoked mocking
headlines around the world. Yesterday they were still at the mercy of their
unpredictable Iranian captors, reduced to making forced false apologies for
breaching Iranian territory.
Nathan Thomas Summers, one of the captured crewmen, was paraded on television.
“We trespassed without permission,” he said. “I deeply apologise for
entering your waters.”
Yesterday Hussein Shari’atma-dari, a senior adviser to the regime, described
the incident as a “plot from London to put more pressures on Iran”. He said:
“The path taken by Britain and the West shows that they do not want to take
any step for the release of the British soldiers, therefore Iran must put
them on trial.”
How could the British forces have been caught so unawares? They should have
been alerted months ago by the Balad Ruz clash to the heightened threat of
an Iranian assault. They might even have read subsequent warnings – reported
in The Sunday Times as recently as two weeks ago – that Tehran was
threatening to kidnap “a nice bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers”.
As Iranian radicals rejoiced at their propaganda triumph last week, even some
of Britain’s friends were scathing in their condemnation of military
impotence and political incompetence.
“Wimping out on Iran” was one of the more polite commentaries in the New York
Daily News. John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations,
dubbed the British government’s performance as “pathetic”.
The crisis has reduced Tony Blair and several of his officials to the status
of irrelevant foghorns, issuing empty warnings about “stepping up the
pressure” and “moving to the next phase”.
Such is the shambles that senior Royal Navy officers at the fleet’s
operational headquarters have been directed to review the rules of
engagement for naval boarding parties. If necessary they will recommend
changes to ensure Britain’s forces are never again seized so easily without
a shot being fired.
THE streets of Tehran were largely empty last week as Iranians celebrated
Norouz, their new year festival. There was a chill in the air and snow on
the distant mountains as Mullah Ahmad Khatami mounted his podium in the
courtyard of Tehran University to lead Friday prayers.
Khatami, viewed as a rising hard-liner, quickly turned to the hostage crisis.
“Britain must know that this is not the 19th century and it should not be
taking an imperial posture,” the burly mullah said.
“Everyone knows that Britain is a defeated nation that acts as a political
broker [for the Americans],” he went on. “You cannot frighten Iran by
sending gunboats and doing whatever pleases you. Iran today is a strong Iran
and is the only country that stands up to the Americans.”
Iran has been resisting a campaign led by the United States and Britain at the
UN to force the mullahs to end Iran’s programme of enriching uranium. Iran
claims it will be used to produce civilian nuclear power but the West fears
Iran wants to produce a nuclear bomb.
Khatami said his religious colleagues sent their “warmest congratulations” to
the “mighty border guards” who had seized the British sailors. He condemned
London for “bullish declarations and devious actions” and warned: “Britain
should understand that if they want to continue that path of bullying, they
would pay a huge price.”
This was scarcely the response that Blair can have been hoping for when he
warned last Tuesday that Britain’s campaign to free the captives would “move
into a different phase” if Iran did not respond.
Blair added: “I hope we manage to get them to realise that they have to
release them.”
While there was no doubting the outrage shared by British ministers, it was
equally clear by Thursday’s cabinet meeting that Britain’s big mistake was
to have allowed the sailors to be captured in the first place.
“It’s not as simple as just being tough with the Iranians,” Margaret Beckett,
the foreign secretary, argued to her colleagues.
“They have tentacles in all sorts of areas such as the Afghan warlords, the
Iraqi insurgents and Hamas.”
In other words, Beckett was suggesting, any military action against Tehran was
likely to be met by a barrage of terrorist reprisals by Iranian allies
around the globe. “We have to be more sophisticated,” she insisted.
At 10 Downing Street, senior officials took a similar line. “There is no real
point in sabre-rattling for its own sake,” said one official. “We have been
looking for the opportunity to engage through our multilateral contacts.”
Variations on that peacemongering theme were expressed widely in Whitehall
last week. John Williams, a former Foreign Office director of communications
who was intimately involved in protracted negotiations over Iran’s nuclear
ambitions, said he believed Beckett’s hands were tied. “The Foreign Office
objective is to get our people out safely. There is just too much at stake
for any other approach,” he said.
Such diplomatic hand-wringing was last week driving American hawks to
distraction. “The Brits have laboured mightily for many years to prevent the
United States from pursuing vigorous action against Iran,” sneered Michael
Ledeen, a prominent neocon and Middle East scholar who has long argued for
regime change in Tehran. “Now they will have to answer to the families of
the hostages.” Ledeen argued that coalition forces should “undertake the
legitimate self-defence to which we are entitled”, and attack terrorist
training camps and bomb factories inside Iran.
Newt Gingrich, the former Republican congressman who is considering a
presidential bid, urged Britain to use military force to destroy Iran’s
petrol production company. If a lack of petrol for their cars forced
Iranians to “go back to walking and using oxen to pull carts”, the people
might rise against the ayatollahs, Gingrich said.
None of which will come as much comfort to the frightened family of Leading
Seaman Faye Turney, 26, who has become the human face of the crisis.
Psychologists have had a field day analysing the pitiful videos of Turney
attempting to cooperate under obvious duress.
The three letters she has purportedly written to her parents. to a
“representative of the House of Commons” and to “British People” were
obviously dictated in large part by her Iranian captors. Yet however crude
Iran’s propaganda may seem in Britain, it is mainly aimed elsewhere. Iran is
patently showing off to its radical acolytes around the globe, revelling in
the chance to kick sand in the face of the West.
The so-called confessions of Turney and Summers were first aired not in Farsi,
which is spoken by most Iranians, but on an Arab-language television station
watched widely in Iraq and Arab Gulf countries. The message was clear – the
Arab world must look to Tehran if it wishes to vanquish the American
invaders and see off their yapping British lapdogs.
How they must have laughed in Iran last week when Britain failed to persuade
the UN even to “deplore” the seizure of its sailors. The UN security council
expressed “grave concern” instead. “That’ll really show the Iranians we mean
business,” commented one disillusioned British diplomat. WITH diplomatic
efforts apparently stalling, attention is likely to return this week to how
the Royal Navy, pride of Britain for at least 350 years, allowed this
disaster to happen in the first place. Have we really sunk so low that we
cannot fight off a few Iranian thugs in what amounted to little more than
militarised speedboats?
Vice-Admiral Charles Style, a deputy chief of defence staff, made a good fist
of defending the navy’s position at a Ministry of Defence press conference
on Wednesday. He had all the right satellite coordinates and charts to show
the Iranians were at fault, but everyone listening knew that it no longer
really mattered exactly where our chaps had been arrested – they should not
have been arrested at all.
That point was rammed home by an officer on board the US frigate that is the
other main ship in Task Force 158, the British-commanded fleet patrolling
off Iraq. Lieutenant-Commander Erik Horner of the USS Underwood said US
sailors’ rules of engagement meant they not only had the right to defend
themselves against that kind of aggression, but also were obliged to do so.
“Our reaction was: why didn’t your guys defend themselves?” Horner said.
John Pike, one of America’s leading military analysts, was similarly baffled
that the sailors’ home ship, HMS Cornwall, was up to 11 miles away, too far
to offer immediate cover as the British inflatables searched an Indian
freighter in a routine antismuggling check. Despite all the evidence that
Iran was looking to capture “blue-eyed officers”, Pike said, “there seems to
have been a loss of situational awareness on the part of the folks on
Cornwall that their boarding party could be snuck up on like that”.
Admiral Sir Alan West, the former first sea lord, defended the lack of
aggression on the British side, pointing out that UK rules of engagement
“are very much deescalatory, because we don’t want wars starting”. He added:
“The reason we are there is to be a force for good, to make the whole area
safe. So we try to downplay things. Rather than roaring into action and
sinking everything in sight we try to step back and that, of course, is why
our chaps were . . . captured.”
The British lapse was all the more surprising because the same thing happened
in June 2004, when eight sailors and marines were seized in the same area
and released three days later. The defence ministry compiled a “lessons
learnt” paper to ensure that those mistakes were not repeated.
The Sunday Times has learnt that the paper highlighted the need for “top
cover” for boarding parties, which should always have been covered from the
air by the presence of a helicopter. The Cornwall’s Lynx – armed with a .50
machinegun that could have caused serious damage to the Iranian fast boats –
had apparently been overhead when the sailors boarded the Indian freighter.
Why did it turn back, leaving the sailors exposed? The ministry initially said
last week that it needed to refuel before retreating behind an insistence
that there was no standard procedure for keeping a helicopter in place.
It also remained a mystery how the Cornwall’s advanced radar and sonar systems
failed to alert its crew to a problem. As a type22 frigate, the Cornwall has
the capability to track ships up to 200 miles away. One recently retired
naval officer said even basic navigation radar should have picked up
motorboats at shorter range, assuming someone was looking out for them.
An official board of inquiry will ultimately be charged with examining the
incident and establishing, among many other things, why no immediate effort
was made to intercept the Iranians as they departed with their captives.
Less easy to predict is how the standoff will be resolved. “A military
confrontation would just be losing all round. Both sides realise that,” said
Robert Lowe of the Chatham House think tank. He said the solution had to be
one where “neither side loses face”.
One experienced source who has dealt with Iran in the past expects the
hostages to be released after a week to 10 days, but he said that was likely
only if Britain relaxed its pressure. “They will not want to be seen to be
reacting to anything we are saying or doing,” he said.
A rescue attempt, if successful, would be hugely popular in Britain and might
restore Blair’s tattered image in America. “There are plans being made [for
a possible rescue],” one senior British source acknowledged. But it is not
even clear where the sailors are being held.
Nor is history on the prime minister’s side. A US attempt to rescue embassy
hostages in Iran in 1980 ended in a fiasco of colliding aircraft in the
desert. Those hostages were held for 444 days.
Additional reporting: Safa Haeri, Paris
Regime continues as it began, with intimidation and violence
1979 Iranian student supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini occupied the
American embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. A
rescue attempt called Operation Eagle Claw failed when a sandstorm made two
helicopters lose their way. The crisis was blamed for Jimmy Carter’s loss of
the American presidential election in 1980.
1980s Iran, which helped to found the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, was
linked to a series of kidnappings of foreigners in Lebanon, including that
of Terry Waite, and to the abduction and murder of Colonel William Higgins,
an American marine.
1989 Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie,
the British author, claiming he had committed blasphemy in his novel The
Satanic Verses. The fatwa remains in force because only Khomeini, now dead,
could remove it; but the regime worked out an agreement with the British
government that it would not be enforced.
1992 Suicide bombing of the Israeli embassy in Argentina which killed
29 people – thought to be the work of Iran.
1994 Suicide bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires that
killed 85 people and wounded 200. Argentine investigators blamed Hezbollah.
2002 Iran involved in attempt by Hezbollah to smuggle weapons to the
Palestinian Authority. A cargo ship was intercepted by the Israel Defence
Forces and found to be carrying $15m worth of weapons, including katyusha
rockets, antitank missiles, mortars and land mines.
2004 Iran seized eight British sailors and held them prisoner for three
days, parading them blindfolded on television and subjecting them to mock
executions. The crisis was resolved through negotiation.
2006-7 America and Britain have accused Iran of fomenting violence in
Iraq, including supplying sophisticated “shaped” bombs used against
coalition troops. A senior British officer last month claimed Iran was
paying $500 to agents in the Basra area to carry out attacks.
1979-2007 Many of Iran’s political opponents have met violent ends at
home and abroad, including Dr Shapour Bakhtiar, the Shah of Iran’s last
prime minister, who was stabbed in his Paris home. Thousands of political
dissidents, including many who originally supported Khomeini’s overthrow of
the Shah, disappeared or were executed as the regime solidified its power.
