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.
Roger that.
"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. "
There's the problem with this episode. A front line commander with limited permission/ability to react to a hostile situation.
"Why isn't the USA involved?"
Because McCain has already stated that there's nothing we can do...
Nice thought...not going to happen though. Nothing short of Iran using "the big fire" will cause that to happen. The Prime Minister and the President are too politically weakened by the rampant pacifism infecting their populations - and powering their internal political enemies - to be able to take any aggressive action. They have no recourse but "diplomacy", because their internal opposition is too powerful to allow anyting else, which is why Iran feels completely free to do pretty much whatever they want knowing the response will be nothing but a "harshly worded" statement that must be cleared through numerous other countries.
We are neutered...and its the flaming pacifism of our own population that did it.
And one I might agree with both in G.B and the U.S.
Many willing to fight die while those that aren't slink off for the next of their 1000 deaths.
Unfortunately those odds are not in the favor of the warrior class.
"you obviously want world war 3"
Are you afraid, Thomas?
You gotta be kidding. Right? Most of the leftist wussies (that's approximately half of Americans) couldn't care LESS if members of our military are being held hostage. And they could care even less than that about the British military. They'll cave and negotiate with the extremists until every one of us is either in slave camps or headless.
___
That means the Iranians just voided their greatest asset - Western peace advocates in the media and on the left.
Now Iran has Great Britain pi$$ed off!
What were they thinking?
The event horizon includes China.
I agree with you in your assessment of the watery nature of the residual gene pool in the population extant in Great Britain...the same can be said for Europe.
However, I would add...as I mentioned in another thread....it was not only the death of the warriors in World War I, but also World War II.
You can't have two such wars with such high mortality within 20 years of each other without it affecting the surviving gene pool. It was hardly even a generation apart. Killed the fathers and then killed the surviving sons. Emasculated the entire population.
Not only did the warriors get killed off, but even those that left offspring behind - the warriors did not come back to raise those offspring. The warriors' progeny was left behind to be raised by traumatized women and the government.
To further exacerbate the situattion - both the high rate of abortions as well as the influx of an alien ideology (actually invited in) to fill the labor gap left by the dead warrirors), can't help but add to the problems.
So, in addition to the death of the warriors and its affect on the gene pool, a fifth column resides in the countries of Europe, the UK, ready to fill the vaccuum.
We are not far behind. Yes, the warriors here are still alive, but our policies are heavily influenced by weak kneed emasculated Europe and the UK. The UN of course, which also unfortunately influences our policies, is dominated by both the "weak knees" and the alien ideology.
How many warriors have been aborted here?
How many of our warriors are ridiculed here?
Even the word "warrior" is considered outdated.
Well, try to defend the country and culture without them. Not possible. We need women to make a home/country/culture and a man to defend that home/country/culture.
I really believe that Iran already has some type of nukes that was sold to them by Russia or North Korea or they are just stupid as hell. How can a country like Iran have such nerve.
WWIII has already been started. Open your eyes.
Dang moonbats...
My guess is that it would be impossible for a ship of war to open fire at that range with the enemy in such close proximity to friendlies without opening up the probability of suffering casualties from friendly fire. Even if the Royal Marines were on board, a sniper shot wouldn't be enough and raking them with automatic weapons fire would be too much.
WHY allow this to happen without a fight????????
Indeed. As an example, when I as an NRA Certified Firearms Instructor give a class to a woman for her FL CCW permit, I always tell her it's never necessary to move to be robbed. Such movement to a place of privacy for the attacker is ALWAYS bad for the prisoner. Never, ever get into a car with an attacker, just because he seems to have the advantage! You'll wind up raped or dead or both. I hope that's not the case, here. There is a female among the captured. Does this demonstrate why we don't like the idea of women in direct combat positions? Sure it's easy to be progressive and sophisticated and certainly women can do the job...but there is a downside as a society when we contemplate the fate of female combatants if captured. I think this was the result of poor planning for the security phase of the operation. They didn't provide a means of resistance to any sort of assault force. Nor was there anything done to insure they had access to indirect fire as a screen. If they had a helicopter gunship nearby there would have been some precision long range fire available. All that would have been needed is the will to employ it, which still doesn't seem to have been the case.
I can't imagine American forces allowing this to happen before their eyes and not try to stop it.
It has happened in history. Remember the U.S.S. Pueblo? Taken by the North Koreans during the height of the cold war? Then there was the attack by North Korean forces against a tree cutting expedition into the DMZ in 1978. The Koreans HACKED to death with machetes and axes a tree cutting party of Americans within full view of American forces all loaded up and ready to SLAY. We did nothing. Let 'em die. It's all about the ROE or Rules of Engagement. It has to do with the spine of the administration in charge at the time and that was IIRC, the Presidency of JIMMY "The Peanut" Carter.
Because if they acted like soldiers, somebody may have gotten hurt!
There's your problem right there. My sympathies to the Captain - if a single one of these sailors dies in Iranian captivity he's going to re-live those events every single day for the rest of his life.
There's your problem right there. My sympathies to the Captain - if a single one of these sailors dies in Iranian captivity he's going to re-live those events every single day for the rest of his life.
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