WASHINGTON, March 28 (UPI) -- For the past four years, British sailors and Marines in zodiac-type rubber boats have been patrolling and checking vessels for smuggling in the narrow Shatt al-Arab waterway. So why did Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps boats wait until March 24 to suddenly surround a British boat and take 15 Brits prisoner (including a woman) -- without firing a shot?
Before declaring a casus belli (an event that provokes, leads to, or is used to justify war), the obvious answer was the U.S. helicopter raid in Irbil Jan. 11 that captured five IRGC operatives posing as Iranian diplomats. At first, Tehran claimed the five were officially accredited consular officials. Along with a treasure trove of documents and computer hard drives, the U.S. raid was an intelligence coup that completed the jigsaw puzzle of Iran's involvement in Iraq from Basra in the south to Irbil in the north, a pattern of subversion that gave Iran more influence in Iraq than the United States.
What appeared to be tit-for-tat military raids also lay the diplomatic groundwork for protracted negotiations for a prisoner exchange. The Iranian decision to take British rather than American soldiers was probably designed to avoid military escalation. President George W. Bush has accused Iran of destabilizing Iraq and warned there would be a nasty response unless the mullahs opted for normal diplomatic behavior.
Taking U.S. prisoners could have triggered U.S. airstrikes against Iran's nuclear facilities. A former British first sea lord, Admiral Sir Alan West, compared British "de-escalatory" rules and U.S. Navy rules of engagement, which spell out the obligation to self-defense. "Rather than roaring into action and sinking everything in sight, we Brits try to step back and that, of course, is why our chaps were effectively able to be captured and taken away," waffled Britain's first sea lord.
The Brits also pointed out that the Iranian naval force that encircled their patrol boat was IRGC's Al-Quds -- naval Special Forces, not regular navy. A distinction without a difference.
A senior Iranian military official linked the Shatt al-Arab capture of 15 Brits with the loss of their five men at Irbil in January. "The decision to capture (British) soldiers was made during a March 18 emergency meeting of the High Council for Security following a report by the Al-Quds contingent commander, Kassem Suleimani, to the Iranian chief of the armed forces, Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouz Abadi," according to the Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, published in London.
The same report said Suleimani warned Abadi that Al-Quds and IRGC operations had become transparent to U.S. and British intelligence following the arrest of a senior Al-Quds officer and four of his deputies in Irbil Jan. 11.
Anxious to avoid a protracted three-way negotiation with the United States and Iran, Britain's Tony Blair warned the mullahs in Tehran that unless diplomacy led to the rapid release of the 15 British prisoners, "a different phase" -- i.e., retaliatory measures -- would have to be contemplated. This was not the first such incident for the Royal Navy.
Three years ago Iran's IRGC captured eight British servicemen in the same waterway, subjected them to a three-day ordeal that included mock executions and a visit to what they were told would be their graves. They were released a week later after being paraded blindfolded on Iranian television. A British sergeant then apologized for the "intrusion in Iranian waters." The British commander at the time said, "It's completely outrageous for any nation to go out and arrest the servicemen of another nation in waters that don't belong to them."
Following the latest incident, the U.N. Security Council voted a new set of tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear ambitions, and the U.S. Navy launched its largest maneuvers in the Gulf since the beginning of the Iraq war. Two aircraft carriers, more than 100 fighter bombers, 15 ships and 10,000 U.S. personnel flexed military muscle just beyond Iran's 12-mile territorial waters.
But Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates made clear his preference was for "higher-level" diplomacy; e.g., above the hot head of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This means, of course, the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The United States is yet to hear from the mullah-in-chief what, precisely, are Iran's security concerns and national and regional ambitions.
Only direct talks at a higher level with both Iran and Syria can begin to lay the groundwork for a free and independent Iraq, guaranteed by all its neighbors. But as Gates pointed out, direct talks with Iran is a path strewn with booby traps.
In his first domestic speech since taking over the Pentagon last December, Gates reminisced about the time in 1979 when he and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski met with Iranian officials to offer diplomatic recognition of the new theocracy. The Iranian response was to demand that the United States turn over the Shah, who was then in exile dying of cancer.
Three days later, 66 Americans were seized in the U.S. Embassy and held for 444 days -- until the day President Ronald Reagan was sworn in. The mullahs presumably got cold feet and assumed the new president would opt for military options.
Twenty-eight years later, the Bush administration is trying to calibrate the right mix of soft and hard power, hoping it will prove smart power. Meanwhile, gold hit a four-week high and oil was on its way to $70 a barrel.
