UK ministers seek deal with Iran for captives

[Marcus Marulus]

Ministers seek deal with Iran for captive

By Sean Rayment, Tim Shipman and Patrick Hennessy, Sunday Telegraph

Ministers are preparing a compromise deal to allow Iran to save face and release its 15 British military captives by promising that the Royal Navy will never knowingly enter Iranian waters without permission.
The Sunday Telegraph has learnt of plans to send a Royal Navy captain or commodore to Teheran, as a special envoy of the Government, to deliver a public assurance that officials hope will end the diplomatic standoff.

The move, which was discussed at a meeting of Whitehall's Cobra crisis committee yesterday, came as Downing Street officials explicitly cautioned against hopes of a speedy outcome and said that families of the hostages should prepare for the "long haul".

The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and the Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, have been warned that the impasse may develop into a long-term stand-off. Privately, officials are speculating that the crisis could continue for months.
The renewed search for a solution was given greater urgency when a senior Iranian official said that moves had begun to put the 15 British captives on trial.
Iran's ambassador to Moscow, Gholamreza Ansari, announced: "Legal moves to determine the guilt of the British sailors have been launched." In an interview with a Russian television channel, he said: "The legal process is going on and has to be completed and if they are found guilty they will face punishment."
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plans to make a formal statement on the crisis on Tuesday. Last night, he denounced Britain's failure to apologise and decision to go to the United Nations: "This is not the legal and logical way."
Mrs Beckett revealed that Britain has replied to a letter from the Iranian Embassy in London, sent on Thursday, which called on the Government to acknowledge that the sailors had trespassed into Iranian waters and confirm that it would not happen again.
She said: "Everyone regrets that this position has arisen. What we want is a way out of it. We want it peacefully and we want it as soon as possible."
Defence officials emphasised that they were not preparing to concede that the two British boats detained nine days ago were at fault. But one said: "We are quite prepared to give the Iranians a guarantee that we would never knowingly enter their waters without their permission, now or in the future.
We are not apologising, nor are we saying that we entered their waters in the first place. But it may offer a route out of the crisis."
Details of the strategy emerged as a former Falklands War commander expressed fury at how the sailors surrendered to Iranian gunboats without a fight.
Maj Gen Julian Thompson called for a review of the Navy's rules of engagement, dictated by the United Nations, that they cannot open fire unless they are shot at first. "In my view this thing is a complete cock-up," he said.
"I want to know why the Marines didn't open fire or put up some sort of fight. My fear is that they didn't have the right rules of engagement, which would allow them to do this."
A former Iranian ambassador to the UN, Sayed Rajai Korasani, said that Britain should be more conciliatory and called for a delegation of MPs to seek the handover of the sailors.

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[Marcus Marulus]

Europe has failed us in the Iran crisis



Labour's Margaret Beckett is getting it right. It's our EU allies who are letting us down

Malcolm Rifkind
Sunday April 1, 2007
The Observer



The Iranians are a sophisticated and sensitive people. From time to time, however, they do something dumb. The seizure of 15 British sailors and Royal Marines was one such example. Parading them on television and requiring them to mouth unconvincing apologies was another.
These events have not happened by accident. For some time the more radical elements in the Iranian government have been trying to find a way of retaliating against the growing pressure from the United Nations in general and the United States in particular. They have been surprised and disturbed that as a result of their nuclear programme, Washington has now achieved a second unanimous Security Council resolution ratcheting up sanctions against Iran.
The Iranians, of course, are indifferent as to whether the British were in Iranian or Iraqi waters. The British were taken for two specific reasons.
First, the Iranians want to demonstrate that they will not be passive while UN pressure is increased on them. They can, and will, retaliate through their close links with the Shia militia in Iraq and Hizbollah in Lebanon. They can disrupt normal traffic in what used to be called the Persian Gulf.
But they have a second objective. Some weeks ago the Americans arrested Iranians in the north of Iraq. They are still detained, accused of helping foment strife against the coalition forces. Tehran may be hoping to trade the British personnel for their citizens.
There is little doubt the British will, eventually, be released but it could now take weeks or months. The Americans have, quite rightly, rejected any deal. That should also be the policy of the British. Any deal would create a precedent that would encourage further kidnapping not just by Iranians but by friends and allies in the region.
But is there any other approach that will secure their freedom? I salute Margaret Beckett and the Foreign Office who have not only demanded that the British be freed, but also secured impressive diplomatic support from many governments and have taken the issue to the UN. Most welcome has been the strong pressure from the Iraqi government and from Turkey. But this will not be enough in the short term.
Iranians will have expected the protests. They are used to playing a long game. At the beginning of the Islamic Republic in 1979, US embassy hostages were held for months. The failure to secure their release helped ensure the defeat of Jimmy Carter, then running for a second term. The mood in Tehran is not so radical now. President Ahmadinejad may go in for radical rhetoric but the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his advisors will be more calculating. They will not be impressed by Western speeches. They will be by Western action.
The challenge the British government faces is to find a means of putting real pressure on Iran that would hurt the regime without escalating the crisis and pushing the Iranians into a humiliating climb-down.
In an ideal world quick action by the UN Security Council would have been the way forward. But the Russians and Chinese insisted on a watered-down statement that neither condemned the Iranian action nor called for the immediate release of the prisoners. Tough action through the UN may prove impossible to achieve given the obstacles on the Security Council.
There was, however, one other approach that would have a good chance of succeeding. The members of the EU aspire to having a common foreign policy. What better issue could there be on which our French, German and Italian allies and partners could show solidarity with the UK and demonstrate the benefits of joint action?
The best means of pressure would have been the export credit guarantees that are given to assist trade between Iran and western Europe. These, together with banking and other financial facilities are the soft underbelly of the Iranians and their withdrawal could do significant damage to Iran's already weak economy.
Such measures have already been canvassed by the Americans in respect of Iran's nuclear defiance.
The firm statement made by EU foreign ministers calling for the 'immediate and unconditional' release is welcome. But the apparent lack of any agreement over economic pressure has two serious consequences. First, it makes it very unlikely that Britain will be able to secure the release of the service personnel in the short term. Second, it is now almost inevitable that Iran will try to impose conditions from the international community and, in particular, the US, on their ultimate release.
This lack of agreement shows how hollow are the aspirations to a common European foreign policy. France and Germany should be ashamed at their refusal to assist their European partner in a humanitarian cause of this kind. If there had been a political will, there could already have been agreement.
The UN, in comparison, would take days or weeks and might face vetoes from predictable quarters. The Iranians might be reluctant to abandon their nuclear programme in the face of such limited economic sanctions from the EU, as they would consider a major national economic interest at stake. But the arrest of the British was a tactic and not a strategy. Once they had realised that their bluff had been called, it would have been quite likely that they would have conceded.
All this would have been even more probable if a European threat had been conveyed privately, thereby letting Iran back down without too much loss of face. It may be that a strategy of this kind is still under consideration. We should not expect the government to reveal all its thinking. Modern diplomacy needs confidentiality and private exchanges as much as it did in a previous age.
One thing, however, is sure. It will be pressure and not rhetoric that will impress the Iranian regime. If the EU is not prepared to help, there will now be a pause. The ball will now be in the Iranian court. · Sir Malcolm Rifkind was Foreign Secretary and Secretary of State for Defence in the last Conservative government.

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[Franze]

They can´t fight with Iran, there are fear.