British diplomats were on Monday night frantically trying to prevent a full-scale diplomatic crisis between London and Tehran after the seizure of three Royal Navy vessels in the disputed waterway between southern Iraq and Iran.
Eight crew members of the three boats, sailors and marines who were part of a British team training Iraqi river police, were being held by the Iranian authorities.
”This morning three British vessels with eight crew entered the Islamic Republic of Iran’s waters and Iran’s naval forces, acting on their legal duty, confiscated the vessels and arrested the crew,” Tehran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, said. ”The crew are under investigation in order to clarify the issue.”
On Monday night Britain reported that it had ”lost contact” with military personnel in the narrow Shatt al-Arab waterway.
”We can confirm that eight Royal Navy personnel from the Royal Navy training team based in southern Iraq have been detained by the Iranian authorities while delivering a boat from Umm Qsar to Basra,” the Ministry of Defence said.
Defence sources said the crew had been plying the waterway in small boats, about four metres long, in bad weather. ”We are not talking about ships, we are not talking about warships, we are talking about small river patrol vessels,” an MoD spokesperson said.
The boats did not have guns mounted on them, though the military crew would have been armed with personal protection weapons. The boats were being delivered to the new Iraqi river patrol service.
The Arabic-language al-Alam TV station reported that the three British boats had been seized at about 11am (6.30am GMT) and that crew members had been carrying maps and weapons. It said the boats had been confiscated between the Bahmanshir and Arvand rivers, which would put them in the Shatt al-Arab waterway east of the Iraqi town of Faw.
”Interrogation of those detained will continue until the matter is clarified,” Asefi was quoted as saying.
The assumption in defence circles was that the incident was the result of a mistake.
Britain’s relations with Iran, carefully nurtured by frequent trips to Tehran by the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, have been affected by the long-running dispute between Iran and the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, over Iran’s nuclear programme. Britain last week joined other EU countries in attacking Iran for not cooperating with inspectors from the IAEA.
”It is extremely unlikely [the incident] carried a political message,” a British official said. ”They don’t usually play games. The nuclear issue is high-level politics, this seems to be low-level military tactics.”
But there was some concern in Whitehall that Tehran may use the opportunity to show its anger at what it says are unfounded western concerns about its nuclear programme.
Despite these concerns, Straw’s approach towards Tehran is less aggressive than that taken by Washington.
”We see no reason why this should turn into a massive deal,” one British official said. ”We will have to wait and see.”
The Shatt al-Arab waterway, dividing Iran and Iraq, has long been a source of tension between the two countries. The 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war broke out after Saddam Hussein claimed the entire waterway.
The waterway has also been an important smuggling route for oil illegally exported from Iraq as well as a crossing point for groups opposed to the US-British occupation and seeking to infiltrate Iraq. The 190km tidal river is Iraq’s only water access to the Gulf. – Guardian Unlimited Â