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Hostages: Iran Raises Stakes
Iran's actions have left both itself and Britain in the position where it seems impossible for either to back down without losing face.
After changing its mind over its promise to release the only female hostage, Leading Seaman Faye Turney, the authorities have released a second letter from LS Turney, this time criticising Britain and the US for remaining in Iraq. British authorities claim the letter's bizarrely stilted tone would suggest that it was dictated to the hostage.
The letter comes as the UN Security Council released a statement expressing "grave concern" for the sailors well-being. The statement was a watered-down version of the proposal Britain wanted: Russia is reported to have refused to demand the immediate release of the British hostages, and did not agree with a section of the text claiming that the sailors were arrested in Iraqi waters.
Iran has offered UK officials access to the British hostages being held in Tehran. It is perhaps the first concession from the Iranian prsident, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Denial of a visit by a country's consular officials is constituted as a breach of the Geneva conventions.
The British government remains adamant that it wants the swift release of all remaining Royal Navy personnel. London hopes its forceful efforts may result in an end to the crisis.
International pressure is mounting. United Nations secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, is currently holding talks with Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, in the Saudi Aradian capital of Riyadh, with regard to the release of the British sailors.
Many Muslim nations have joined the condemnation of Tehran.
The coerced parade of British hostages, and LS Turney's first letter to her family, in which she claimed that the Navy vessels were in Iran's waters illegally, have been condemned as crude propaganda. Britain's foreign minister Margaret Beckett has argued that releasing the footage was particularly cruel.
Your correspondent has spoken with MI6 associates who contend that Turney's letter and performance on the Iranian video will be scoured for clues to her situation and the level of coercion involved - servicemen are often trained to include codes in their writing or behaviour if they risk being abused for propaganda reasons.
Iran followed Britain's GPS proof of the site of the arrest with its own version, including testimony from an Iranian coastguard.
It is difficult to see where this is going. Britain has already released its version of the story: Had London accepted the troops had strayed off course and into Iranian waters, in what is a disputed region anyway, there is a fair chance that the hostages would have been released by now. However, Britain's actions demonstrate it is adamant that its men and women were outgunned, outnumbered and snatched in what in the old days used to be an Act of War.
If Britain were to back down and accept Iran's version of the story now, few would have cause to believe anything the British authorities told them ever again. No-one expects anything like the truth from Iran, but it seems all that remains for it to do now is to release the hostages in a forced display of Iranian benevolence and hospitality.
Oddly, the major British blogs - with one honorable exception - are silent on the issue. The newspapers, for once, have the scale of the hostage crisis, so it is bizarre to see the UK's top blogs focussing on arcane party political gossip. The exception, as ever, is the great EU Referendum Blog, which is picking up on issues the media has handled incompetently and asks a few relevant questions about the British version of the kidnap:
"Then we see the Iranian film. One scene is missing from the BBC rendition , a very short sequence with a "grab" shown above right. This shows a close up of HMS Cornwall. But it is Iranian film.
"Let me get this straight ... one presumes the Cornwall is still in Iraqi waters. So, the Iranians, having kidnapped two boat crews from the Cornwall now hang around in Iraqi waters to get a video shot of the frigate? Otherwise, how come the Cornwall got that close to the Iranian boats? And if Iranian boats are in Iraqi waters, how come no protest is made?
"Between what we are seeing and what we are being told, there seems to be a few gaps. And what we see simply does not compute."
