Posted on 03/25/2007 5:17:55 AM PDT by Dog
THE official notification, delivered in secure calls yesterday morning to senior Whitehall figures, was the latest dramatic behind-the-scenes move to get to grips with a crisis that is now engulfing the government.
After a day of shadow-boxing with a notoriously slippery regime, Tony Blair is set to up the ante: the plight of the Shatt al-Arab 15 is officially a crisis and he will need the Cobra team to handle it.
The clutch of VIPs will gather in an operations room several floors below Downing Street as early as this afternoon to plot an escape from a military spat that now threatens to become an international incident.
The decision came just 24 hours after the crew of HMS Cornwall had been caught in the confusion of direct confrontation with Iranian vessels in the searing heat of the Gulf.
As the crew members were surrounded in their two rubber dinghies, the Cornwall's commander, Commodore Nick Lambert, frantically radioed back to his own top brass for instructions.
The response to the inquiry, which had been immediately patched through to Ministry of Defence headquarters in Whitehall, was to hold fire.
The order to show restraint has been observed throughout the forces and the British government in the 48 hours since, but it is unclear how long both sides will be able to maintain control.
Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett's first response to the gathering crisis on Friday was to keep to diplomatic conventions. After a hurried phone call to Blair, she immediately summoned Iran's ambassador, Rasoul Movahedian, to her office to explain their behaviour.
After a meeting described by officials as "brisk but polite", Beckett emerged to stress that she was "extremely disturbed" by events.
It was an understated description of the deep concern now gripping the government. Not only was Blair's administration alarmed at the risk to the 15 military personnel, which included at least one woman, but it was in no doubt over Tehran's ability to use their plight to make a wider point.
During a flurry of diplomatic activity in the hours after the snatch, the Iranians' rhetoric repeatedly elevated their action, and the alleged motives of the British, to a multinational affair. It was the eve of a second UN Security Council resolution imposing sanctions over Iran's refusal to halt its programme to enrich uranium. The Shatt al-Arab 15 were, from the start, pawns in a perilous international game.
"It looks like too much of a coincidence," a senior Foreign Office insider confirmed.
The response was a no- nonsense demand for Iran to relent - and Britain freely used the international community to back up its case. Beckett dispatched the UK chargé d'affaires, Kate Smith, to confront the government in Tehran, armed with the insistence that the British sailors had been in Iraqi waters.
In the meantime, Blair made a personal call to European allies, including EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, to secure a public denunciation of the Iranians' actions.
"It was impressed on everyone how important it was to raise the diplomatic temperature, rather than keep a low profile and let them make a song and dance of the situation," one defence official said.
"There is nothing to be gained in provoking a confrontation, because that would be playing into their hands. But neither should we let them have it all their way. We tried that before and we're still trying to get our kit back."
The smaller-scale precedent, the taking of six British marines and two sailors on the same waterway in June 2004, was a painful lesson. The personnel were only returned after they had been paraded blindfold on Iranian television and admitted entering Iranian waters illegally. Three years on, the government is still pressing Iran for the return of its boats and kit, including valuable radar equipment.
The degree of concern felt across Whitehall was demonstrated yesterday, when Movahedian was called back to the Foreign Office, this time to see Beckett's minister, Lord Triesman. The British were clearly attempting to warn off Tehran before it could begin to use the servicemen and women as a significant propaganda tool.
It was, however, a race against time - and through it all, the diplomats and the politicians were acutely aware that Tehran has built a foreign policy on disregarding diplomatic niceties.
Top level COBRA is an acronym for Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, where its meetings are held.
Tony Blair, senior ministers, police and security chiefs all take part. It is called after events such as 9/11, 7/7
and can evoke emergency powers such as suspending Parliament or restricting movement.
As Churchill stated after Munich, "They were given a choice between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor, and now will have war." Too bad Carter didn't know squat about history.
Absolutely. Every time I try to use a historical analogy they respond with blank stares.
"I can't imagine American forces allowing this to happen before their eyes and not try to stop it.
And I mean that as no disservice to the Brits, I really don't."
This is primarily a british incident so I'm am sure Bush has already told Blair that we stand by them 100%. They have stood with us in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They are just weighing all the possibilities and consequences. Blair is the one that has more to lose if he doesn't act.
The NATO community needs to close all borders and air space in and out of Tehran. The U.N. just needs to go away. All of their cocktail parties over the years have shown how feckless and ineffective that body truely is. I truly don't know why it needs to be in the U.S. Relocate it to Fiji or somewhere. I cannot believe we were actually going to allow the Great Mahdi a visa to come to the U.S. after he states he wants nuke weapons and wants to wipe israel off the map. Are we insane?
Big Time "Talk".............no Action
The Islamists have had our number since Carter established the wimp doctrine and Clinton re-affirmed it. And now neither we nor our allies will be safe anywhere in the world, and somehow the left feels that this middle east mess is a result of Bush's doctrine. Can you believe it. They have had the worst foreign policy in the history of this country that we are just beginning to pay for and they want to transfer the blame and continue with more of the same fiasco.
All the mess we are in in the Middle East is because Carter failed to act (though Iran wasn't going to allow Reagan to be in office 10 minutes while they held the American hostages). Clinton proved to bin Laden (in bin Laden's own words and correctly so I might add) that America (at least the left) dosen't have the stomach to stand up for America and there by sends an engraved invitation to the Islamists, and the Kennedy's, Kerry's, Pelosi's, Murtha's and etc. of the world are lost in the fog of their own complicity in the root cause of this mess.
This guy is a clown, it appears that he cherry picks a thread every few months just to drop a few bombs.
So, as I understand it - the Brits had a frigate there but the Commodore was ordered to hold his fire....
Well, why bother having a frigate there?
Save yourself some money - and get rid of the frigate and just have a bunch of inflatable rafts running about since you aren't going to use the fire power of the frigate anyway.
This is NOT the much vaunted British Navy of old. That was a Navy that controlled the world.
Now they can't even control some beach boats sent out by a two bit country like Iran to capture their people and equipment.
And....its the second time in a couple of years this has happened so its not some fluke.
It's a symptom -
If the British Navy is at this level of "fright" - we, the United States, are indeed alone.
Of course, there was the time when a two person motor boat was able to come alongside a U.S. N. war vessel and blew up and almost sank our destroyer. Killed our sailors. Because we forgot that it is a very old naval precept to always always always defend and protect the ship - especially in a hostile harbor. To allow a harbor craft to come alongside without challenge is inconceivable.
These people need to re-read some of the old naval literature - going back about 500 years.
Well, we are not only alone, we are also going down the same road.
This was clearly planned and I believe the Captain of the ship the British stopped was in on ot. It was an ambush clear and simple and the second time they have done this. How long before they do it again? Time to make an example.
Why didn't the britsh commander go get his men back and then notify the politicians? If he got fired he would still be a national hero.
Lets see the brits were in uniform conducting a sanction mi9ssion and the five Iranians were in civilian clothes conducting military operations against coalition forces. Who are the spies?
I was upset in 1991 when we didn't finish the job in Iraq, I was royally pissed that Carter didn't level Iran when they had our diplomats. My son is deployed over in the Persian Gulf as we speak and I say nuke Iran back to the stone age so my grandchildren won't have to deal with it.
I like Daladier's response to the acclaim he received when he returned to Paris after Munich. He said to his aid, "The fools!".
Given the "restraint" Washington puts on our troops in the field, not hard to imagine at all.
"I hereby re-christen that boat the HMS Cornwallis."
H.M.S. Chamberlain.
"Some don't have children to send. Some won't send their chidlren. While others are affected by doublethink, or the concept of holding two contradictory ideas in one's mind and accepting both of them."
NOBODY sends their children!
Their adult offspring hear the call to duty and volunteer.
40mm guns of the USS HORNET fire at Japanese suicide dive bombers, the Kamikazes, as the carrier's own planes were raiding Tokyo, February 16, 1945. By the end of the war, Japan will have sent an estimated 2,257 Kamikazes. "The only weapon I feared in the war," Admiral Halsey said.
I don't think so...shrillary wants a Belgrado moment....something like a multiple Fosterization.
"and although the sailors would have been extremely vulnerable in that situation, the alternative has now left the U.K. looking like a weakling who will not properly defend her troops nor fight when push comes to shove."
Think of this from the perspective of other British troops.
Think of the other British troops and sailors "on the line."
What do you think it does to their morale, to know the commanders of their fellow troops will order them to stand down and watch if they themselves are captured?
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