As Iran sees it, provocative British trespassing in the Shatt al-Arab waterway is one element in an American-driven policy of destabilisation that includes systematic infringements of the country’s territorial, economic and political sovereignty.
As the United States and Israel see it, Iran’s unjustified actions are proof that the Tehran regime is dangerous beyond reason, showing that all Western and “moderate” Arab countries must join in battering it into submission.
That left Britain’s 15 service personnel stuck in the middle.
The extent of covert US operations against Iran is unquantifiable. There is no evidence that Britain is involved, although some knowledge must be assumed, given the key role of British forces along the Iraq border. But the impact of Washington’s and its proxies’ activities is increasingly measurable.
Iran’s complex ethnic make-up renders it especially vulnerable to external disruption. The population is 50% Persian, 24% Azari, 8% Kurd. Iranian officials maintain Sunni Arab, oil-rich Khuzistan, abutting the Shatt al-Arab, is a high-value target for CIA and British subversion using agents linked to exiled resistance groups.
Terrorist bomb attacks and other ostensibly separatist violence are a regular occurrence. There were unconfirmed reports in January last year of an attempt to assassinate President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Ahvaz. The unrest has produced harsh reprisals, including executions. It is perhaps Iran’s most sensitive border area — as the British captives have discovered.
But Iran also accuses Pakistan’s pro-Western government and others of complicity in recent attacks on security personnel in mostly Sunni, south-eastern Sistan-Baluchistan province.
Apart from strengthening internal opposition, the supposed American aim is to block a gas pipeline that would cross Baluchistan en route to India. The US has been pressing Delhi to scrap the project, as it is urging Turkey, European countries and oil companies to cut Iranian energy ties.
Iran’s hardline Interior Minister, Mustafa Pour-Mohammadi, last month alleged a nationwide conspiracy. “Iranian intelligence services have acquired information that show the US, Britain and Israel have been behind the unrest in various parts of Iran, including Khuzistan, Kurdistan and West Azerbaijan, in the past few years,” he told the Aftab news agency.
Turkish sources back Tehran’s assertions that the US is funding and indirectly arming the Kurdistan Free Life party, a sister organisation of the proscribed terrorist group the Kurdistan Workers’ party.
The result has been increased, sporadic violence between Iranian Kurds and security forces — and a de facto anti-Kurdish alliance between Ankara and Tehran that reportedly led at one point to cross-border shelling of Kurdish positions by Iranian artillery.
Acknowledged, as opposed to covert, American policy avenues include bilateral and UN sanctions relating to the nuclear issue; ongoing attempts to choke development of Iran’s oil and other industries by curtailing access to the international banking system, foreign investment and (mostly European) export credits; and last week’s unsubtle demonstration of US naval and aerial power on Iran’s doorstep in the Gulf.
The US exercises went ahead despite the delicate position of the British captives, underscoring fears that Washington may try to exploit the situation even as London tries to defuse it.
Nicholas Burns, a senior state department official, told the Senate recently that, apart from trying to “blunt Iran’s regional ambitions”, the US was seeking to change Iranian society from within. “We are promoting greater freedom in Iran by funding a variety of civil society programmes … to improve the free flow of information to the Iranian people [and] support human rights and democratic reform.”
For Iranian officials, all this, coupled with US squeezing of Iranian interests in Iraq and Washington’s attempts to build anti-Tehran Arab alliances, looks like undeclared warfare. Whether it was pre-planned or not, their handling of the Shatt al-Arab incident may be their way of saying: enough.
But, for American hawks and Israeli hardliners, the crisis is confirmation of Tehran’s malevolence — and proof that US pressure is telling and should be stepped up. They hope to use the stand-off to persuade wavering European and non-aligned states to back their stance on the nuclear and other issues. — Â