The English tabloid, The Sun, complained, supposedly without their consent, that the British sailors and marines captured by the Iranians on the high seas were sent home in cheap suits supplied by none other than the Iranian president himself.
On TV at least, those suits looked pretty good to me. They were easy-going outfits, in various inoffensive colours, and nobody could complain that they were ill-fitting. Some care had been taken to ensure that the briefly detained marines looked relaxed and fine.
The Iranian president, who has a charming way of wearing neither European suits and ties nor the religious formality of the robed and turbaned mullahs that we have become accustomed to, but wears bomber jackets and open-necked shirts, scored a major point by at least making the water-borne Tommies look relaxed and respectable in front of the cameras as they boarded the plane home.
But, of course, the suits were shed as soon as they got on the plane, and the marines arrived back on their native soil wearing something approximating full British battle dress. And that, indeed, is how they were paraded at their first press conferences in London.
Much was made of the Iranians’ propaganda victory during this strange stand-off. Who can tell what is what? From the time the marines and so-called sailors were seized, nothing was clear — and things became less clear as time wore on.
The Iranians said that the British troops had strayed into Iranian waters. I have never understood how anyone can decipher exactly where one patch of sea ends and another begins, but, for the sake of argument, what was going on? Why were those marine chaps and, for the hell of it, or otherwise, one British marine chick sailing so close to Iranian waters anyway, given the much-hyped tension about the possibility of an Iranian nuclear threat, and the ongoing Anglo-American occupation of Iraq?
The whole world has been agog for some time to see what is going to happen next, as it is — after Afghanistan and Iraq, an invasion of Iran, and then, possibly, Syria? So what was really going on and why did nobody tell us anything useful to make us understand it better?
Many questions arise. Why should it be taken so glibly that the British sailors and marines were not, in fact, in Iranian waters but ‘legitimately” in Iraqi waters? Who gave them those Iraqi waters to operate in with such impunity in the first place? Where does international law stand on all of this?
No use trying to find answers on CNN or the BBC. Answers were not on offer. Sensational images downloaded from Iranian TV, showing captured British marines eating healthy, wholesome, Iranian food, in some cases admittedly with some apparent distaste and discomfort, it would seem, was the best we got. Oh, and much was made of one marine sucking on a clearly welcome cigarette, while wearing a comely scarf (not a veil) over her head. She didn’t look too shabby, or particularly deprived at all.
So many unanswered questions. The biggest question is, where was all this going? The British Navy was clearly rattling sabres close to Iranian waters, if not inside those waters themselves. The Iranian Navy was responding by saying, ‘Don’t take us for fools.” And the fact that the British vessel appeared to have no backup, and was not geared to defend itself and repel all forms of attack (if they were indeed on an innocent mission in international waters) raises even more questions.
So was the whole episode a carefully staged media operation orchestrated by both sides? Did the Brits know what they were deliberately getting into? Did the Iranians play along? And is this a prelude to another lethal confrontation?
The war in Iraq is unravelling even more spectacularly than the war in Afghanistan. But none of us can forget that they have the same origins, and have been fuelled by the same logic.
Experts and pundits from around the globe have been speculating with more articulacy than most of us are able to marshal at our fingertips that the inevitable logic is Western control of the Middle East, in the manner of, say, the much-famed Lawrence of Arabia. Except, of course, that TE Lawrence had a certain kind of respect and admiration for the territory he was fighting to secure, and for the people who lived in it. None of that seems evident in the present execution of the spreading battles on the ground on that same territory.
So, when the British marines and mariners (whoever they were, and whatever they were doing out there in the contested waters of an indefinable ocean) were put into pretty nice suits, free, gratis and for nothing, along with generous presents, and even had the honour of shaking the hand of the Iranian president as they boarded the plane, some subtle drama was being played out.
So far, it looks like the Iranians have won, as far as the rules of international courtesy are concerned. But the Western media machine has swung into action to make it look otherwise. Not just the suits, discarded on the plane home, but the Iranians in general have been trashed in the process of this unholy war.
And so we wait to see what the outcome will be. I fear it can only be less understanding, and more trouble.