Brinkmanship Unwise in Uncharted Waters
MEMORANDUM
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Brinkmanship Unwise in Uncharted Waters
The frenzy in America’s corporate media over Iran’s detainment of 15 British Marines who may, or may not, have violated Iranian-claimed territorial waters is a flashback to the unrestrained support given the administration’s war-mongering against Iraq shortly before the attack.
The British are refusing to concede the possibility that its Marines may have crossed into ill-charted, Iranian-claimed waters and are ratcheting up the confrontation. At this point, the relative merits of the British and Iranian versions of what actually happened are greatly less important than how hotheads on each side—and particularly the British—decide to exploit the event in the coming days.
There is real danger that this incident, and the way it plays out, may turn out to be outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s last gesture of fealty to President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and “neo-conservative” advisers who, this time, are looking for a casus belli to “justify” air strikes on Iran. Bush and Cheney no doubt find encouragement in the fact that the Democrats last week refused to include in the current House bill on Iraq war funding proposed language forbidding the White House from launching war on Iran without explicit congressional approval.
If the Senate omits similar language today, or if the prohibition disappears in conference, chances increase for a “pre-emptive” US and/or Israeli strike on Iran and a major war that will make the one in Iraq seem like a minor skirmish. The impression, cultivated by the White House and our domesticated media, that Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-majority states might favor a military strike on Iran is a myth. But the implications go far beyond the Middle East. With the Russians and Chinese, the US has long since forfeited the ability, exploited with considerable agility in the 70s and 80s, to play one off against the other. In fact, US policies have helped drive the two giants together. They know well that it’s about oil and strategic positioning and will not stand idly by if Washington strikes Iran.
Perfidious Albion/Tamed “Poodle”
Intelligence analysts place great store in sources’ record for reliability and the historical record. We would be forced to classify Tony Blair as a known prevaricator who, for reasons still not entirely clear, has a five-year record of acting as man’s best friend for Bush. If the president needs a casus belli, Blair will probably fetch it.
Is there, then, any British statesman well versed in both the Middle East and maritime matters, who is worthy of trust? There is. Craig Murray is former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan (until he was cashiered for openly objecting to UK and US support for torture there) and also former head of the maritime section of the British Foreign Office, and has considerable experience negotiating disputes over borders extending into the sea.
In recent days, former ambassador Murray has performed true to character in courageously speaking out, taking public issue with the British government’s position on the incident at hand. He was quick to quote, for example, the judiciously balanced words of Commodore Nick Lambert, the Royal Navy commander of the operation on which the Marines were captured:
“There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that they were in Iraqi territorial waters. Equally, the Iranians may well claim that they were in their territorial waters. The extent and definition of territorial waters in this part of the world is very complicated.”
Compare the commodore’s caution with the infallible certainty with which Blair has professed to be “utterly confident” that the Marines were in Iraqi waters, and you get an idea of what may be Blair’s ultimate purpose.
Writing in his widely read blog (http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/weblog.html ), Murray points to a “colossal problem” with respect to the map the British government has used to show coordinates of the incident and the Iran/Iraq maritime border—the story uncritically accepted by stenographers of the mainstream press. Murray writes:
“The Iran/Iraq maritime boundary shown on the British government map does not exist. It has been drawn up by the British Government. Only Iraq and Iran can agree on their bilateral boundary, and they have never done this in the Gulf, only inside the Shatt because there it is the land border too. This published boundary is a fake with no legal force…Anyway, the UK was plainly wrong to be ultra-provocative in disputed waters…
“They [the British Marines] would under international law have been allowed to enter Iranian territorial waters if in “hot pursuit” of terrorists, slavers, or pirates….But they were looking for smuggled vehicles attempting to evade car duty. What has the evasion of Iranian or Iraqi taxes got to do with the Royal Navy?”
Ambassador Murray has appealed to reason and cooler heads. To state what should be the obvious, he notes it is not legitimate for the British government to draw a boundary without agreement of the countries involved:
“A little more humility, and an acknowledgment that this is a boundary subject to dispute, might actually get our people home. The question is are we really aiming to get our people home, or to maximize propaganda from the incident?”
Casus Belli?
What is known at this point regarding the circumstances suggests Royal Navy misfeasance rather than deliberate provocation. The way the UK and US media has been stoked, however, suggests that both London and Washington may decide to represent the intransigence of Iranian hotheads as a casus belli for the long prepared air strikes on Iran. And not to be ruled out is the possibility that we are dealing with a provocation ab initio. Intelligence analysts look to precedent, and what seems entirely relevant in this connection is the discussion between Bush and Blair on Jan. 31, 2003 six weeks before the attack on Iraq.
The “White House Memo” (like the famous “Downing Street Memo” leaked earlier to the British press) shows George Bush broaching to Blair various options to provoke war with Iraq. The British minutes—the authenticity of which is not disputed by the British government—of the Jan. 31, 2003 meeting stated the first option as:
“The US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach.”
Not to mention the (in)famous Tonkin Gulf non-incident, used by President Lyndon Johnson to justify bombing North Vietnam.
Saving Face
The increasingly heavy investment of “face” in the UK Marine capture situation is unquestionably adding to the danger of an inadvertent outbreak of open hostilities. One side or the other is going to be forced to surrender some of its pride if a more deadly confrontation is going to be averted. And there is no indication that the Bush administration is doing anything other than encouraging British recalcitrance.
Unless one’s basic intention is to provoke a hostile action to which the US and UK could “retaliate,” getting involved in a tit-for-tat contest with the Iranians is a foolish and reckless game, for it may not prove possible to avoid escalation and loss of control. And we seem to be well on our way there. If one calls Iran “evil,” arrests its diplomats, accuses it of promoting terrorism and unlawful capture, one can be certain that the Iranians will retaliate and raise the stakes in the process.
That is how the game of tit-for-tat is played in that part of the world. What British and American officials seem not to be taking into account is that the Iranians are the neighborhood toughs. In that neighborhood, they control the conditions under which the game will be played. They can change the rules freely any time they want; the UK cannot, and neither can Washington. Provocative behavior, then, can be very dangerous, unless you mean to pick a fight you may well regret.
Someone should recount to Tony Blair and Ayatollah Khameini the maxim quoted by former United Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix just last week:
“The noble art of losing face
Will someday save the human race.”
Ray Close, Princeton, NJ
Larry Johnson, Bethesda, MD
David MacMichael, Linden, VA
Ray McGovern, Arlington, VA
Coleen Rowley, Apple Valley, MN
Steering Group
Veteran Intelligence Professionals
for Sanity (VIPS)
Thank you for this enlightening article. I hope it’s widely read. Of course, common sense leads anyone to doubt Blair and give more credence to the Iranian side of this story.
1. Tony Blair has lied repeatedly.
2. Britain has no business in Iraq, and certainly not in waters even remotely close to Iran.
3. Iran has an obvious reason to be jealous of its borders…Continued threat of attack by Israel, US and Britain & the clear need to enforce sovereignty.
Tony Blair has called for the “isolation” of Iraq. This is ridiculous posturing, coming from a small nation hiding behind a bully. Iran has done nothing wrong. It has done things that are unpopular with neoconservatives in the US and Israel.
This is no justification for war, for invasions, for violations of national boundaries, for sanctions, for bombings of civilians by the UK or US.
Actually, Blair is considering (and so is Bush) condemning many hundreds or thousands of US and UK soldiers to death or disabling wounds, in order to unleash a purely aggressive war, to escalate the war of aggression that is the Iraq debacle. That was a failed policy, based not on defense, but on ambition. This is illegal in our democracy. It is a high crime. And Bush, and Blair have the blood of many thousands of American soldiers on their hands. They also have the blood of many civilians in Iraq on their hands. They have usurped power, that is a power given to monarchs and tyrants, to conduct wars of ambition.
It’s not legal.
!!!!!!!!!!!! EMERGENCY CALL TO ACTION !!!!!!!!!!!
I don’t think Bush has any intention of vetoing the Supplemental funding bill if it ever gets to his desk. One of the benchmarks he has to certify turns Iraq’s oil over to the major American and British oil companies is buried in this Supplemental!
Please read Richard Beham’s “George Bush’s Land Mine” just posted here on Common Dreams. Excerpt:
“The Iraqi Parliament has before it today, in fact, a bill called the hydrocarbon law, and it does call for revenue sharing among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. For President Bush, this is a must-have law, and it is the only “benchmark” that truly matters to his Administration.
Yes, revenue sharing is there-essentially in fine print, essentially trivial. The bill is long and complex, it has been years in the making, and its primary purpose is transformational in scope: a radical and wholesale reconstruction-virtual privatization-of the currently nationalized Iraqi oil industry.
If passed, the law will make available to Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, BP/Amoco, and Royal Dutch/Shell about 4/5’s of the stupendous petroleum reserves in Iraq. That is the wretched goal of the Bush Administration, and in his speech setting the revenue-sharing “benchmark” Mr. Bush consciously avoided any hint of it.
The legislation pending now in Washington requires the President to certify to Congress by next October that the benchmarks have been met-specifically that the Iraqi hydrocarbon law has been passed. That’s the land mine: he will certify the American and British oil companies have access to Iraqi oil. This is not likely what Congress intended, but it is precisely what Mr. Bush has sought for the better part of six years.
It is why we went to war.”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ACT NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We have to contact every member in the Congress that is on the panel to reconcile the House and Senate version of the Supplemental funding bill that just passed both houses of Congress. This “benchmark” has to be stripped out of this bill before it goes to Shrub’s desk!
GO! GO! GO!!!
P.S. I’m going to go on over to Move On and see what the can do.
Thanks.
Sad to say but the timing of this incident reflects the same kind of economic and oil price manipulation we’ve seen for quite a number of years. The executive branches of both the US and Britain have the ability to coverup orders given in the name of national security. Who knows even Iran could be in on the huge amounts of money that are tranferred and made because of higher oil prices.
Iran would do the world a favor, by immediatley releasing these sailors and encourage OPEC to drop oil prices substantially for a time. This would certainly spoil the plans of Bush and Blair supporters.
Personally I believe this incident was predictable because of the need to hedge inflation without raising interest rates. To me it is more of the same and the small boat of sailors are pawns in a larger game of the politics of greed, big oil and maintaining the interests of the MIC.
I wrote a lengthy blog this morning on this very subject. The waters between Iraq and Iran have been disputed ever since Iraq was created and has been the source of part of the reason the two nations warred for a decade. This is a gambit similar to the manufactured Gulf of Tonkin Incident that propelled the US military into Viet Nam. The US and it’s somewhat willing ally, Tony Blair…not Great Britain, just Blair, he’s all alone on this as is George Bush, but they will begin a war with Iran, the ‘mounting evidence’ of Iran’s support of Iraqi insurgents is becoming a little too obvious and no one will be surprised when Iran drops the straw onto the camel back that Bush and cronies are jumping up and down on in an effort to break it in a plausible fashion that will allow history to vindicate him…such delusions of grandeur…so much waste. Who benefits from a destablelized Iran? The same forces of greed that benefit from the destablelization of Iraq…the defense contractors for one, and they are right next door, how convenient.
It’s always a pleasure to read your views and analysis. Whenever I see Ray McGovern’s name, I go to that article first. Bill Moyers is another. And of course Molly Ivans was always a good read.
But to my point here today. Without taking any side is this issue, I find it appalling how the USA is totally outclassed when it comes to political maneuvering. The Iranians are being calm and practical. They are treating the prisoners well and they have a very good argument to back up their actions. Finally, why were marines purportedly chasing boats carrying cars in these disputed waters?
A thing a better word than brinkmanship would be stupidity. The USA has seemed to lost all its ability to handle issue diplomatically. The USA would rather blow the hell out of someone or something before negotiating.
Everyday that passes, Bin Laden, and Fidel Castro are winning points while our own government has to constantly play the part of the fool - and a dangerous fool at that.
Great analysis of the situation, but I don’t think an air strike is justified by the capture of these sailors. It happened in 2004 and no armed retaliation occurred then.
It won’t make sense to the ‘mediated public opinion’ that air strikes will liberate the sailors because the logic will tend towards sacrificing the sailors in exchange for destroying nuclear weapons-producing facilities - and that doesn’t parry well, unless, as the article DOES suggest, Britain and the U.S. DO continue to (foolishly,stupidly,ignorantly,ass-mindedly,shit-headedly) up the ante into full-blown war. I don’t think that’ll happen. They didn’t create the hostage situation and therefore Iran, really does hold the cards, here.
At best, they can spin the incident as best they can to reduce damage to the ‘mediated public opinion’. As the article suggests, Blair (and Bush) has(have) and will continue to lie for his (their) nation(s). Blair will be believed because human nature is to have faith in that which justifies, however false, what defines us.
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(Rebel Farmer, as worthy as your cause is, please stick to topic. Your post diminishes and detracts from the issues and responses to the article above.)
“There is real danger that this incident, and the way it plays out, may turn out to be outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s last gesture of fealty to President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and “neo-conservative” advisers who, this time, are looking for a casus belli to “justify” air strikes on Iran.”
This must be his thank you to our imperial King George for including “British Petroleum” into the Iraqi oil contracts deal.
Having been involved with the intelligence community, black budgets, covert operations,etc., VIPS must be very familiar with the old cliche, “honor among thieves”.
Sorry…I won’t go off topis again.
The tettering domino in this is Pakistan: Would Musharref survive if war is visited on Iran? He’s hanging on by a thread now as it is.
If we don’t IMPEACH NOW, I don’t even want to think about what more evil this administration will commit in our names. Thier well of corruption seems to be bottomless!
I have a too simple way to get both sides out of this argument and save face. Water is fluid and maybe the water that was ion the Iraqi side flowed over to the Iranian side. Blame the flow of liquid and call it a draw. Let Iran give the Brits back and we give the Iranians back we might have in custody.
Dear plenum, Are there rules saying we have to stay on topic? And who gets to decide if a post is within the parameters of a topic? I don’t mind if Rebel Farmer runs around like Paul Revere. His message is an important one.
Sorry, Rebel Farmer, maybe I should have said his/her message. No sexism intended.
Rebel Farmer~ if we don’t IMPEACH NOW, as you suggest, one wonders if the U.S. would ever in a million years impeach a (Republican) President. For anything other than 69ing the Sec of State on live television, that is.