Iran's Great Gamble

On March 23rd, 15 British sailors were detained by Iranian forces in the Shatt Al Arab waterway. The sailors were from the HMS Cornwall, a British frigate that was inspecting an Iraqi merchant ship in Iraqi waters according to the Royal Navy. The incident is very similar to an incident in June 2004 where Iran seized eight British sailors for straying into Iranian territory on the same waterway. The Royal Navy admitted the sailors had accidentally strayed into Iranian waters during the 2004 incident.

The Shatt Al Arab waterway's exact borders have been in dispute for some time.

Control of the waterway and its use as a border have been a source of contention between the predecessors of the Iranian and Iraqi states since a peace treaty signed in 1639 between the Persian and the Ottoman Empires, which divided the territory according to tribal customs and loyalties, without attempting a rigorous land survey.

The Royal Navy has claimed the sailors were 1.7 nautical miles into Iraqi waters during the supposed encroachment into Iranian territory. Iran stands by it's claims that the sailors were indeed in Iranian waters and demanded an apology from Britain in order for the sailors to be released.

From the Washington Post:

Aandahl said the British crew members were intercepted by several larger patrol boats operated by Iranian sailors belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, a radical force that operates separately from the country's regular navy.

The seizure of the British vessels, a pair of rigid inflatable boats known as RIBs, took place in long-disputed waters just outside of the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway that divides Iraq from Iran, Aandahl said. A 1975 treaty divided the waters down the middle between Iraq and Iran, but the area remains disputed.

"It's been in dispute for some time," Aandahl said. "We've been operating there for a couple of years and we know the lines very well. This was a compliant boarding, this happens routinely. What's out of the ordinary is the Iranian response."

A fisherman who said he was with a group of Iraqis from the southern city of Basra fishing in Iraqi waters in the northern area of the Gulf said he saw the Iranian seizure. The fisherman, reached by telephone by an AP reporter in Basra, declined to be identified because of security concerns.

"Two boats, each with a crew of six to eight multinational forces, were searching Iraqi and Iranian boats Friday morning in Ras al-Beesha area in the northern entrance of the Arab Gulf, but big Iranian boats came and took the two boats with their crews to the Iranian waters."

Hossein Abedini, a member of an Iranian opposition group, has claimed that the seizure of the British sailors was premeditated and ordered by Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. These claims have not been verified by any substantial evidence however.

Abedini told a London press conference that an Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval garrison had been on alert from the night before the kidnapping, to prepare for the operation.

Mohammad Mohaddessin, who handles foreign affairs for the council, said in a statement that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had ordered the detention of the Britons in the hope of pressuring the British government over a threat to toughen U.N. sanctions.

"You can see that the clerical regime had in a premeditated act arrested British sailors in order to win concessions from the international community and divert attention from its nuclear project," Abedini said. "Claims that the sailors were arrested in Iranian territorial waters are baseless."

The sailors were released on April 5th, 13 days after being taken into custody by the Iranians. The following day, the sailors had these things to say about their captivity:

"Throughout our ordeal, we faced constant psychological pressure," they said in a joint statement

"We were interrogated most nights and given two options. If we admitted that we had strayed, we would be back on a plane to the UK pretty soon. If we didn't, we faced up to seven years in prison," they revealed.

...

The sailors' description of their captivity was in sharp contrast to the images of them smiling on Iranian television. Those images were an Iranian "media stunt", they said on Friday.

...

"I can clearly state we were 1.7 nautical miles from Iranian waters," Lieutenant Felix Carman told the news conference.

Possible reasons for the apprehension of the sailors

1. The obvious one - perhaps they were indeed inside Iranian waters during the time of their apprehension. Perhaps they "strayed" there as had happened in 2004.
2. As the member of the Iranian opposition group mentioned above, Iran may have done it "in order to win concessions from the international community and divert attention from its nuclear project".
3. In order to obtain the release of Iranian captives in Iraq or elsewhere.

On the release of the sailors

The British sailors were released in a great spectacle by Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinijad on Thursday, April 5th.

"On the occasion of the birthday of the great prophet (Muhammad) ... and for the occasion of the passing of Christ, I say the Islamic Republic government and the Iranian people — with all powers and legal right to put the soldiers on trial — forgave those 15," he said, referring to the Muslim prophet's birthday on March 30 and the Easter season.

British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said that no deal was made with Iran in exchange for the release of the British sailors.

They were released "without any deal, without any negotiation, without any side agreement of any nature", he said.

There is speculation as to what did prompt Ahmadinijad to release the sailors however. The Times of London and NewsMax believe there were some internal struggles within the Iranian leadership that led to the release of the captives.

Other sources point to a possible US deal to release an Iranian diplomat and perhaps members of the Quds Force, an element of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard supposedly operating in Iraq against coalition forces.

The release of the Irbil five has been a high priority for the Iranians since the men were captured. Indeed, at the plenary meeting for this month's foreign minister-level conference in Baghdad, the deputy Iranian foreign minister accused America of having hundreds of Iranian nationals in its custody.

American military and intelligence officials have confirmed this figure to the Sun, noting that the Iranians in American custody are partly a result of a change in the rules of engagement and a new Iraq strategy.

The Irbil five, however, are also of high value to the American military, whose commanders in Iraq have opposed efforts to hand over the men, who they say are high-ranking members of Iran's Quds Force, to the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government.

One concern about releasing the five Iranians or transferring them to Iraqi custody, according to one administration official, is that they are knowledgeable about American interrogation techniques. "They will share this knowledge with the next batch of Quds officers that come to Iraq," the official, who requested anonymity, said.

Another concern is that the five Iranians in American custody are particularly dangerous. The administration official described them as "paymasters" and "terrorism coaches."

It's hard to speculate as to what really did lead to the release of the captive sailors or even what the true cause was for their capture in the first place. It's also too early to tell what the fallout of this situation will be for Iran, Britain, and the US. For now, Britain has suspended further boarding operations in the northern Persian Gulf region.

UPDATE: a.k.a. zooomabooma points out that the location of this incident is actually outside the Shatt al-Arab waterway and is out in the Northern Persian Gulf.

Here is a link to the location in Google Maps. Click the link, then click on the "Satellite" link over on the upper right. Then zoom out and you should be able to see the location of the incident according to the British Royal Navy.

UPDATE: Here's a clip from an Iranian-born journalist about the area where the sailor's were when they were apprehended. The rest of his article is an interesting read as well.

We may never know what actually happened. The area where the sailors were captured is at the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab, a border estuary that has caused two wars between Iran and Iraq since the 1970s. Iraq claims ownership of the entire estuary, while Iran wants it divided between the two neighbors. It is possible that the sailors thought they were in Iraqi waters while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard's Marines believed them to be on the Iranian side.

Technorati Tags: iran, iraq, quds, britain, sailors, Tony Blair, Mahmoud Ahmadinijad, Shatt Al Arab, HMS Cornwall