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How Blair Botched the Iran Hostage CrisisHint: Take a look at Iraq.

By Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Posted Thursday, April 5, 2007, at 3:29 PM ET
Marines and sailors held captive by Iran return to London. Click image to expand.

In his speech denouncing the 1938 Munich agreement, Winston Churchill said, "We have suffered a total and unmitigated defeat. ... This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor we arise again and take our stand for freedom." Churchill has become a totemic figure for the Bush administration and the neocons, revered and continually cited, and those words might easily be quoted after the March 23 capture of the 15 British hostages and their subsequent release by the Iranian government.

In fact, that was pretty much what John Bolton—no longer U.S. representative at the United Nations but still a regular performer on British television—did say Wednesday evening. He saw the end of the crisis as a victory for Tehran: "Win-win" for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Although there is natural relief throughout the country that the British service personnel, 14 men and one woman of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines, are now home, joy has been distinctly qualified, even before today's news that another four British soldiers had been killed in southern Iraq.

"Has this been a diplomatic triumph for Blair or a humiliation for Britain?" asked the Daily Mail. Many people agree with Bolton that it was the latter, all the way through Wednesday, when the ever-unpredictable Iranian president produced his dazzling coup de théâtre and announced the release of the prisoners. "The Clemency of Mahmoud" was a brilliant performance, a good deal better, certainly, than Tony Blair's."

From the beginning, the London government was on the back foot. The first question concerns the responsibility of the Royal Navy. Vulnerable inflatable craft, little more than lightly armed dinghies, were sent into an area of acute sensitivity at a time of acute tension after the imposition of U.N. sanctions, on top of the turmoil in Iraq. The crew was put in harm's way, with no possibility that they could be rescued if anything went wrong, although the flagship HMS Cornwall and naval helicopters don't even seem to have made a gesture of resistance or assistance.

Nor have the rights and wrongs been clear-cut. Repeating the London and Washington line, Bolton says that Iran was entirely in the wrong from the start: The British boat was in Iraqi territorial waters. Period. But not only Tehran disagrees. When Craig Murray, formerly of the maritime section of the British Foreign Office, was interviewed on BBC TV this week, he was asked who was telling the truth. "Nobody," he replied.

Contentious borders used to be called "debatable land," and the whole Persian Gulf is debatable water. In the vast estuary of the Tigris and Euphrates at the northern end of the Gulf, the coastline itself continually shifts, and the notional sea boundary with it. We are credulous about modern high-tech gadgetry, including the wonderful Global Positioning System, although plenty of evidence, from automobile satellite navigation to voting machines, might be a caution against blind faith in machinery. From my own modest experience of navigating a small boat, I know it is far-fetched to think you can know your exact position on the high seas to within a few hundred yards—and that may still be true even with GPS.

When Murray was asked if there was a culprit, he said, "No. 10"—referring to the home and office of the prime minister. For all the angry venom of Iran, the row could have been defused at an early stage if it hadn't been for Blair's grandstanding. Wise people learn early on that, whether dealing with business rivals or flaky Middle Eastern regimes or merely with your own recalcitrant children, you should never utter threats you can't enforce.

Our prime minister forgot that elementary lesson. It was perfectly clear that there was nothing that London could do in military terms to chastise Tehran. Does even John Bolton think that the Black Watch regiment should have marched from Basra to Shiraz or that the Royal Air Force should have bombed Tehran? By taking the question to the U.N. Security Council and the European Union, Blair invited humiliation, which he duly received, and in the process he turned an incident into a crisis.

There have been other painful reminders of how diminished our authority is. While the pacifist left doesn't think our forces should have been in the Persian Gulf in the first place, the patriotic right have been dismayed by the conduct of those talkative hostages, with their continual expressions of penitence for having done the wrong thing and of gratitude toward their captors. That culminated when one of these brave lads told Ahmadinejad yesterday, "We are very grateful for your forgiveness."

Whatever happened to "name, rank and number"? thunder the Conservative Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail, hearkening back to the fortitude our prisoners of war displayed in World War II (or at least in subsequent flag-waving British war movies), when they were supposed to say nothing at all to their captors beyond those basic particulars. Once upon a time, or so we supposed, our chaps would have preferred death to dishonor.

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Geoffrey Wheatcroft's book Yo, Blair! has just been published in Britain.
Photograph of British naval personnel by Bruno Vincent/Getty Images. Photograph of naval personnel on Slate's home page by Tim Ockenden/AP Photo.
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Remarks from the Fray:

A few people are seized during a wartime exercise by a nearby modestly hostile nation with uncertain leadership and a generally moderate populace. 14 days later, they are "pardoned" and returned without so much as a hair out of place, except for a few apologetic videos. Somehow, this is a disaster for the outgoing Prime Minister? And the end of Western influence in the Middle East? Because he didn't officially bomb Tehran/kidnap the President or force Tehran to admit he was right?

The only thing more inflated that the Brits' sense of importance in this world is their sense of offended dignity. When the British navy ruled the high seas, I'm certain from time to time a group was waylaid by a foreign sort who was bribed to permit a release. The world kept turning and will still. Iran is not a stronger country today than it was two weeks ago, nor is Britain weaker. Perhaps they are just both smarter.

--rundeep

(To reply, click here.)

These young British men and women who were captured by Iran [are] decent people and no doubt did their jobs well. But dying was never part of the deal. Yes, they knew when they were posted to Iraq that they might get sniped or blown up. But that is a risk like getting run over in the road--a reasonable risk that you take because that's just the way it is. Things do come out of the blue. Knowing that and carrying on doesn't take particular courage. Fatalism gets most soldiers, like most people in general, through that kind of danger.

What takes courage is when you're isolated and helpless and nobody has prepared you for this. As a former POW interrogator, I have some idea what happened to these fifteen after they were captured. I know that their captors did everything possible to keep them isolated, ignorant and insecure. They wanted them to be jittery; but then they also wanted to reassure them, on a selective basis, because that would teach the prisoners that their captors held the key not only to fear but also to comfort. The toughened inmates of Abu Ghraib, who knew what real torture was, might not have responded to that kind of treatment, but these fresh young things who were used to being cared for in every way had never had to tolerate prolonged dread. The way to break them was expose them to fear, then convince them that all their captors expected was an exchange of polite sentiments. See, we Iranians can be nice people! Why don't you British be nice, too? They were well-brought-up young people; why not?

So I'm not too surprised that these sailors and marines, who were sent out like security guards at a department store, and who were never taught what to expect if someone suddenly held a gun to their heads, proved relatively pliable in Iranian hands. It would be unrealistic to expect otherwise. They weren't at war. They were doing a job. Who dies for his job?

--Fritz_Gerlich

(To reply, click here.)

This entire spectacle perfectly fits an expression that is far too casually thrown around these days: Politcal Theatre. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Tony Blair co-starring in a sad little character piece written in a weekend by some hack with delusions of Beckett.

The substance of the thing is negligible since it was never about accomplishing anything concrete on one side or the other. It was all about projecting an image to the outside world.

So that leaves us with style. Ahmadinejad, for all his blustering, kept things fairly humble: The Britons intruded in our waters, we have seized them, we believe that international law is on our side. He knows that he is seen as a preening borderline lunatic who can not be trusted, and his performance played to that fact: "You already think I'm crazy so I can give a perfectly straight delivery and still have it come off as dangerous." In essence, he has tried to establish himself as the Christopher Walken of international politics.

Conversely, Blair tipped his hand early, shooting straight for the grand gesture by bringing in the UN and making all manner of veiled and clearly empty threats. Trying to go for a quiet menace, which unfortunately was as convincing as Bill Bixby stating that we wouldn't like him when he's angry.

There followed a period of mutual finger into ear insertion and overlapping choruses of "La-la-la I-can't-hear-you La-la-la" on both sides. This is, of course, de rigeur in the modern age of international relations; but considering Blair's strong opening volleys caused the entire stand-off portion of the play to come off as anti-climatic.

Finally we get to the third act. Clearly it was reaching the point where it was in everyone's best interest to bring this thing to a close. Britain couldn't follow through with much of anything. Iran similarly had few options. The ways in which a trial of the British saliors could backfire were myriad and continued inaction would run the risk of boring the audience.

Enter Iran's grand gesture (this one far more skillfully timed than Britain's UN gambit). Mahmoud Ahmadinejad handled this with a theatricality that could make him a sought after consultant in the upcoming election cycle. The pinning of the medal on the Iranian commander, the hour long lecture on British imperialism/interference and the entire grandstanding event telegraphed sabre rattling and escalation, capped with the well-timed turn: a complete "pardon" offered as a gift to British people! An Easter gift, no less!

The hypocritical little spiel about how Tony Blair needs to listen to a care more for his people sealed the theatricality and also proved that this was not meant to sway governments. People engaged in politics know how well Ahmadinejad has followed this advice. Running on a platform of domestic reform only to turn his back on his people for world-stage theatre games is really the defining action of his presidency, but do you think the British people who have lowered Blair's approval ratings to depressing levels though about that?

And what was Blair's endgame? "We took an even approach neither negotiating nor confronting." Um . . . doesn't that sound curiously like doing nothing?

--EMStoveken

(To reply, click here.)

(4/8)

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