03/28/2007

British Sailors Held Prisoner in Iran

Powder Keg at Shatt al-Arab

The Shatt al-Arab waterway, where Iranian forces seized 15 British sailors last week, has been contested by regional and world powers for decades. The first shots of the Iran-Iraq war were fired here. Iranian sensitivities and the West's desire to protect Iraqi oil installations make for an explosive mix.

When the British assault ship HMS Bulwark guarded the waters of Shatt al-Arab one year ago, a long and overstretched telephone cable connected the captain's deck to the officers' mess rooms at breakfast, lunch and dinner time: Captain Clive Johnstone insisted on keeping track of radio transmissions in the north of the Persian Gulf during mealtimes.

The stretch of Iraqi coast at the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway is only 50 kilometers (31 miles) broad, bordering on Kuwait in the west and on Iran in the east – and is considered one of the most politially sensitive bodies of water in the world.

It's here that two Iraqi oil terminals, the Basra and the Chaur al-Amaja terminals, jut out of the water some 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) from the coast. When the terminals work at full capacity, they can feed about 2.5 million tons of oil into tankers a day. With all other Iraqi pipelines paralyzed by insurgent activities, Baghdad depends on the two terminals for about 80 percent of its state budget. No other state in the world has a single similarly vulnerable spot.

That's why Western navy units have been patrolling the north of the Gulf for three years, guarding the crown jewels of the Iraqi government. Sometimes US forces are in charge of the patrols, and sometimes British forces. There have always been incidents. In April of 2004, two Arab dhows detonated explosives near the terminals, shutting them down temporarily. Al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility. The cost of the terminals being out of use was $28 million.

Rising diplomatic tension

In June of 2004, Iran arrested eight British navy men at Shat al-Arab. And in late March of 2006, two speedboats from the fleet of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Pasdaran, raced towards the commanding vessel, the Bulwark. It was just the kind of situation Captain Johnstone had in mind when he hauled his heavy phone receiver with him into the mess room.

Last Friday, 14 men and one woman from the crew of Johnstone's colleague Jeremy Woods, the captain of the HMS Cornwall, were taken prisoner by Iranian forces.

But the political context of this most recent incident is far more loaded than that of any previous one: The tone of the communications exchanged by the United States and Iran has grown increasingly hostile during the past months, and the United Nations Security Council deciced on Saturday to impose a second set of sanctions on Iran.

While the United States, Britain and Iran declared themselves willing to begin negotiations on the future of Iraq with other countries in the region in early March, the politically and militarily charged atmosphere in the Gulf makes the arrest of the 15 British crew members just the kind of incident neighboring countries feared.

London on Wednesday froze official contacts with Iran, which announced that it would free the woman among the British sailors. Iran insists that the marines and sailors were inside Iranian waters and said the governments of both countries could settle the matter through "close cooperation".

But British Prime Minister Tony Blair says he is "utterly certain" they were operating in Iraqi waters. But for most Iranians, the arrests are not likely to be as outrageous as most people in Britain find them. The presence of British military forces on Iran's southwestern border makes for a sensitive topic in Iran – and it did so even before the constitution of the Islamic Republic.

Iran historically deeply suspicious of Britain

Most of Iran's oil wealth lies concentrated in Chusistan province, which is why the British would have liked nothing more, after World War One, than to make that stretch of land with its Arab population part of a British-controlled sheikhdom. But that was prevented by Shah Reza Pahlevi, who managed to consolidate his power. Still the region remained disputed, because the British remaining in Iraq continued to covet it.

Violating international custom, the British fixed the border along Shat al-Arab in such a way that the entire river, which marks the border between Iran and Iraq, became Iraqi territory – right up to the Iranian coast. It was only in 1975 that the government in Baghdad accepted shifting the border to the center of the river – a concession in return for which Shah Resa Pahlevi ceased supporting insurgent Iraqi Kurds.

In 1980, Saddam Hussein changed his mind, and the eight-year war between Iraq and Iran began with an Iraqi bombardment of the Iranian oil refinery town Abadan on the eastern bank of the Shat. Britain and the United States sided with the Iraqi dictator, providing him with military reconnaissance, weapons and even poison gas – a decision that continues to represent a bitter legacy liability for the West, and especially Britain, to this day.

Andrew Phillips, a British member of parliament, recently noted that the number of Iranians killed between 1980 and 1988 is comparable to that of British losses during World War One. In Iran, anti-British sentiment isn't limited to conservatives or to the radicals surrounding President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It's much more deep-seated than the hatred of the "Great Satan," the United States, that is constantly reiterated, partly for propaganda purposes.

Bargaining chips

So what does Tehran want? It's still possible the crisis caused by the recent arrests will end as harmlessly as the one involving the eight British sailors in June 2004. Then, the two sides settled for a statement to the effect that the British had "accidentally" entered Iranian territory. On the other hand, in the current political context, the 15 British citizens represent a welcome pawn in the hands of Iran– so much so that a rapid resolution of the conflict seems unlikely.

The regime has at least two good reasons to keep its prisoners in Tehran for the time being. It could attempt to use them to exert pressure in the ongoing conflict over Iran's nuclear program. That would be a bold strategy – and probably a futile one, given that a broad international alliance has positioned itself against Iran on this issue.

But Tehran could also try exchanging the 15 British prisoners for the Iranians arrested during US raids in Iraq in the past months. This strategy would at least have a diplomatic framework and a forseeable schedule: Representatives of Iraq's neighboring countries and of the United States and Britain want to meet in mid-April in Istanbul for a second conference on Iraq, and this time the countries' foreign ministers will be taking part.

So the British sailors are probably facing a two-week wait – provided careless statements don't further escalate the situation.

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