Ahem...
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.
I wonder if the rules of engagement have been changed since this incident? I'm sure a lot of seagoing Brits are anxious not to repeat this.
I have to agree that you blokes are not 'poofters'. I also think that the Brits were in an impossible situation. If the HMS Cornwall had opened fire on the Iranians and not being able (I think) to engage all of the Iranians boats, they would have sacrificed the 16 personnel in the rubber boat. May have killed a few Iranians but lost their people.
I think the Brits know what they are doing and we may find out after this is resolved.
Sorry about that. I've just been feeling ornery for personal reasons recently so I decided to do some light trolling.
My prayers are up for the fifteen, but a nice airstrike on a couple of Iranian refineries would help too...
Cheers!
Hopefully we'll never have to. But if a terrorist organization detonated a nuclear device over the U.S. and we could determine a responsible rogue regime, I imagine we would retaliate in kind.
I think it's possible for a terror organization to do this, and in additon to killing hundreds of thousands of Americans with radiation, it would shut down most normal communications in the U.S., paralyzing our economy. The Democrats don't seem to understand the consequences of losing in Iraq, which is the key battle in the war on terror. The Democrats in Congress are undermining our troops, giving aid and comfort to the enemy: treason defined. The penalty for treason should be death by hanging.
I'm sure you don't mean to be offensive mate, but calling the British people cowards and weaklings when we are your ONLY friend willing to lose troops by your side is very disrespectful. Todays British troops are the ones who have won two Victoria crosses in Iraq and Afghanistan to add to numerous gallantry medals. They have also saved the lives of US troops.
http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/HistoryAndHonour/RoyalMarineReceivesConspicuousGallantryCross.htm
The British have a superb military record in the modern period. We also have never, and never will, compromise with those holding hostages.
Somewhere Lord Nelson's ghost is weeping at what has become of his Royal Navy...
Ahem...
In fact it's part of in-place nuclear protocol.
Whether lucky, in support roles etc does not mean they were cowards and weaklings.
You are correct in that the slaughter was terrible, it left most families with "maiden aunts", women whose fiances died and then there were not enough men to go around, especially after the Spanish Flu epidemic.
The survivors in my family, from both wars served with distinction whether in infantry and tanks in WW1 or medics and cryptologists and paras in WW2; to imply that they were some sort of weaklings or offspring thereof is not respectful.
thanks for those quotes
C.S. Lewis touches on this in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy:
"Peace to them all. A worse fate awaited them than the most vindictive fag among us could have wished. Ypres and Somme ate up most of them. They were happy while their good days lasted."
Cheers!
How did the British lose last time? We didn't give the Iranians anything for the release of our personnel
MOST of us didn't react to the news that way. SOME of us are well aware that the UK was the ONLY country which stood with us and was shot at with us during all those longly years patrolling the Northern and Southern no-fly zones and allowing the Kurds to thrive and prosper under their own form of self rule - while many other countries were openly profiting from the Blood for Oil Vouchers scam.
The UK has always been our staunchest ally. Well, since the Revolutionary war. ALMOST always ;-)
Anyhow, the US has always been able to rely on the Brits, and at least until Hillary is elected in '08, the UK can rely on us in kind.
You tell everyone you have a chance to that if the left in both countries hadn't been engaging in double digit political posturing with their single digit IQ's, Iran probably would not have been emboldened to take this step, and the ONLY OTHER reason the Iranian government is doing it is to divert the Iranian public's attention from toppeling their evil regime.
No worries, I agree that a couple of airstrikes on certain nuclear sites may be required ! ;-)
I seem to recall that Abraham Lincoln jailed congressmen for obstructing the war.
Most right-thinking Brits are also honoured to be at the side of the US as a force for good in the world. :-)
We Brits are generally a modest bunch, but it is disheartening to sometimes see our sacrifices dismissed by some Americans on this board. Good news from Tony Blair by the way. I've just seen him on the news with his 'serious' face on stating:
'We have certainly sent the message back to them very clearly indeed. They should not be under any doubt at all about how seriously we regard this act, which is unjustified and wrong."
LOL
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