Better That Iranians Didn’t Go After Yanks
A Similar Attack on Americans Could Have Led to Casualties and an Excuse For Bush to Bomb Iran.
“I don’t want to second-guess the British after the fact,” said U.S. Navy Lt. Commander Erik Horner, “but our rules of engagement allow a little more latitude. Our boarding team’s training is a little bit more towards self-preservation.” Does that mean that one of his American boarding teams would have opened fire if it had been them in the two inflatable boats that were surrounded by Iranian Revolutionary Guard fast patrol boats off the coast of Iraq last Friday? “Agreed. Yes.”Just as well that it was a British boarding team, then. The 15 British sailors and marines who were captured and taken to Tehran for “questioning” last week are undoubtedly having an unpleasant time, but they are alive, and Britain is only involved in two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan. If it had been one of Erik Horner’s boarding teams, they would all be dead, and the United States and Iran would now be at war.
Horner is the executive officer of the USS Underwood, the American frigate that works together with HMS Cornwall, the British ship that the captive boarding party came from. Interviewed after the incident by Terri Judd of the Independent, the only British print journalist on HMS Cornwall, he was obviously struggling to be polite about the gutless Brits, but he wasn’t having much success.
“The U.S. Navy rules of engagement say we have not only a right to self-defense but also an obligation to self-defense,” Horner explained. “[The British] had every right in my mind and every justification to defend themselves rather than allow themselves to be taken. Our reaction was, ‘Why didn’t your guys defend themselves?’ “
So there they are, eight sailors and seven marines in two rubber boats, with personal weapons and no protection whatever, sitting about a foot above the water, surrounded by six or seven Iranian attack boats with mounted machine guns. “Defend yourself” by opening fire, and after a single long burst from half a dozen heavy machine-guns there will be 14 dead young men and one dead young woman in two rapidly sinking inflatables, and your country will be at war. Seems a bit pointless, really.
It’s a cultural thing, at bottom. Britain has a long history of fighting wars and taking casualties, but the combat doctrines are less hairy-chested. British rules of engagement “are very much de-escalatory, because we don’t want wars starting,” explained Admiral Sir Alan West, former First Sea Lord. “Rather than roaring into action and sinking everything in sight we try to step back, and that, of course, is why our chaps were … able to be captured and taken away.”
That emollient British approach is probably why the Iranian Revolutionary Guard chose to grab British troops rather than Americans. It was obviously a snatch operation: the Iranians would not normally have half a dozen attack boats ready to go even if some “coalition” boat checking Iraq-bound ships for contraband did stray across the invisible dividing line into Iranian waters (which the British insist they didn’t).
But it was not necessarily an operation ordered from the top of Iran’s government. In fact, there is no single source of authority in Iran’s curious system of “multiple governments,” as one observer labeled the impenetrably complex division of responsibilities and powers between elected civilians and unelected mullahs. The Revolutionary Guards (who are quite different from the regular armed forces) enjoy considerable autonomy within this system.
According to the U.S. authorities in Iraq, the five Iranian diplomats arrested by U.S. troops in a raid in Irbil in Iraqi Kurdistan in January were actually Revolutionary Guards, and it would seem that their colleagues want them back. Kidnapping American troops as hostages for an exchange could cause a war, so they decided to grab some Brits instead. And it will probably work, after a certain delay.
In this episode, the American reputation for belligerence served U.S. troops well, diverting Iranian attention to the British instead. In the larger scheme of things, it is a bit more problematic.
A quite similar snatch operation against the equally belligerent Israelis last July led to a monthlong Israeli aerial bombardment of Lebanon and a retaliatory hail of Hezbollah rockets on northern Israeli cities. Well over 1,000 people were dead by the end, although nothing was settled.
Any day now, a minor clash along Iraq’s land or sea frontier with Iran could kill some American troops and give President Bush an excuse to attack Iran, if he wants one — and he certainly seems to. If the Revolutionary Guards had got it wrong on Friday and attacked an American boarding party by mistake, he would have his excuse now, and bombs might already be falling on Iran. All the pieces are in place, and the war could start at any time.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
©2007 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
I have no doubt war with Iran and the US is about to happen. It seems very close now - Bush, Cheney, and their neocon outfit are going to crank their Mideast mis-adventure into a world war. Martial law in the US will be next; perhaps, who knows, suspension of the US national elections in ‘08! And, tragically, it is called the fight to preserve freedom and democracy! How absurd.
So there’a 50-50 chance the Brits were on one side of the line or the other. It took 3-4 days for them to put together not actual evidence to show on the BBC but “charts” of where the MoD said the sailors were anyway. So what’s that worth?
There’s a 90 percent chance that whoever revealed that the 5 Iranian ambassadors were in fact Rvolutionary Guards did not make that admission under his own free will.
It’s 100 percent established that Bush and Blair lie whenever it serves their oily (?) purposes.
The international reputation of the US is in the toilet. We used to be considered tough, but not bloodthirsty.
I just don’t think America has the military power to start a war with Iran. It has been so destroyed by the immoral and illegal war in Iraq. However, facts are seldom used in the Decider’s decision-making process.
Someone explain to me again what exactly the british sailors were doing in the shatal-arab waterway ? Maybe they lost their way but ‘home’ is rather far away one would think unless they were looking for a sunny beach to park their pale as~!es.
Maybe the Iranians should give them a lesson in modern history and explain to these neanderthals that the sun has set on the british empire.
I don’t know how the news reports are in the US, but would be more than somewhat surprised if it wasn’t more detailed than it is here in Denmark where it is uncritically reported that the Brits where in Iraqi territorial waters.
The fact is, just where the boundry goes is, umm, under discussion. Moon of Alabama has some good graphics: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2007/03/blairs_faked_bo_1.html#more
Ah, but why do I bother? I’m sure that youall get the real poop on the news in the US and not the pablum we get here.
Some one strayed over the line, who cares?
Britts have been caught over the line before, so what? The US captures five Iranians in Irbil, Iraq, and never will release them, what’s new?
But try to sell Iranian crude to the world for Euros, well, you will soon see the results of doing that.
China shifts to euros for Iran oil.
http://business.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=474362007
Will this incident be the trigger and more justification for an all-out attack on Iran?
According to published reports, plans are made and ready for a US attack. For more on this, the article below may be of interest:
“Will Bush, Cheney attack Iran? When and why?”
Populist Party of America
February 2, 2007
http://www.populistamerica.com/will_bush_cheney_attack_iran_when_and_why
I suspect that Denmark is getting news that is a whole lot more complete and honest than we are. Our media are toadies to Bush & Co. So….
And you’re right. Our military is stretched to the breaking point. But if you think that is going to stop the maddmen in the White House, you would be wrong. Just like they thought that Iraq was a “slam dunk”, they have already drawn up plans for “winning” a war with Iraq with arial and navel warfare. This is going to be fun…….
Nietzsche said,..but not bloodthirsty.
I find that assumption absurd, and offer only two cases for starters. The first example is now generally accepted, but whats the problem in acknowledging the second, any ideas ?
The Vietnam war with covert bombings in Cambodia and Laos resulted in 3 million deaths.
‘Counting the cost’ by Richard Horton.( Google)
The figures have now been vindicated by the government’s own advisers. It’s time we held our leaders to account for the 650,000 Iraqi dead.
Britain is very far from the Persian Gulf. Under the present circumstances in which the U.S and Britain are inseparable war criminal buddies in the war with Iraq, and because the White House and Congress have not taken the military option against Iran off the table, it becomes more palpable what these royal navy guys were up to. If it’s genuinely determined that these sailors have violated the Iranian sovereignty by knowingly entering the Iranian waters, they should then be tired as wartime spies and dealt with accordingly—unless they can prove that they came there only to fish. Now, since Iran does not run a Gitmo and lacks military commissions, it will probably have to ask the humane government of the US for the subsequent treatment of the capture sailors.
The administration cannot use the same script with Iran that they used with Iraq because that would be too transparent. War is however imminent - perhaps “limited strikes”. That will no doubt have catastrophic consequnces on the region and the world. The Democrats have little to offer in alternatives. Long live American dictatorship!
Er… Exactly whose map was Blair using to demonstrate how right he was?
After years of bloody war between Iraq and Iran I would assume the only maps that matter were those showing borders by agreement between those two countries; not one that is conveniently drawn by or for the BBC.
Maybe I fell asleep at the wheel but it seems all of a sudden the woods are crawling with evangelical wing nuts who want to help God with his doomsday prophecies…scary part is these modern day Jehovahs have the president by his ear….or some part of his anatomy.