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Muddy Waters?
Remember those British sailors seized by the Iranian navy last year? At the time, the Ministry of Defence claimed that they were safely in Iraqi waters when they were captured. Now, a new report says the fifteen sailors and marines were actually in disputed waters claimed by Iran. The coalition had actually defined the waters as Iraqi, but hadn't bothered to alert Tehran as to the new status.
The Times reports:
— The arrests took place in waters that are not internationally agreed as Iraqi;
— The coalition unilaterally designated a dividing line between Iraqi and Iranian waters in the Gulf without telling Iran where it was;
— The Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ coastal protection vessels were crossing this invisible line at a rate of three times a week; It was the British who apparently raised their weapons first before the Iranian gunboats came alongside;
— The cornered British, surrounded by heavily armed Iranians, made a hopeless last-minute radio plea for a helicopter to come back and provide air cover.
Why, then did the British Defence Secretary argue the opposite? In the Commons, he said,
"There is no doubt that HMS Cornwall was operating in Iraqi waters and that the incident itself took place in Iraqi waters . . . In the early days the Iranians provided us with a set of coordinates, and asserted that was where the event took place, but when we told them the coordinates were in Iraqi waters they changed that set and found one in their own waters. I do not think that even they sustain the position that the incident took place anywhere other than in Iraqi waters”
Iran's treatment of their hostages was disgusting; its gloating parade of the captured British unacceptable. But surely the British people - and the rest of the world - deserved a clearer picture of how this crisis arose? Can this government be trusted to tell the truth about anything?
