Robert Fisk: The war of humiliation

Published: 02 April 2007
Independent

Our Marines are hostages. Two more were shown on Iranian TV. Petrol bombs burst behind the walls of the British embassy in Tehran. But it's definitely not the war on terror. It's the war of humiliation. The humiliation of Britain, the humiliation of Tony Blair, of the British military, of George Bush and the whole Iraqi shooting match. And the master of humiliation - even if Tony Blair doesn't realise it - is Iran, a nation which feels itself forever humiliated by the West.

Oh how pleased the Iranians must have been to hear Messers Blair and Bush shout for the "immediate" release of the luckless 15 - this Blair-Bush insistence has assuredly locked them up for weeks - because it is a demand that can be so easily ignored. And will be.

"Inexcusable behaviour," roared Bush on Saturday - and the Iranians loved it. The Iranian Minister meanwhile waited for a change in Britain's "behaviour".

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Holocaust-denying President from hell, calls Blair "arrogant and selfish" - and so say all of us, by the way - after refusing to play to the crowd at the United Nations. They'll release "serviceperson" Faye Turney. Then they won't release her.

Veiled Faye with her cigarette and her backcloth of cheaply flowered curtains, producing those preposterous letters of cloying friendship towards the "Iranian people" while abjectly apologising for the British snoop into Iranian waters - written, I strongly suspect, by the lads from the Ministry of Islamic Guidance - is the star of the Iranian show.

Back in 1980, when Tehran staged its much more ambitious takeover of the US embassy, the star was a blubbering marine - a certain Sergeant Ladell Maples - who was induced to express his appreciation for Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution just before America's prime-time television news.

The Iranians, you see, understand the West. And they understand it much better than we understand - or bother to understand - Iran.

We have forgotten the years of Allied occupation in the Second World War, the deposition of the pro-German Shah and then, humiliation of humiliations, the overthrow of the democratic Prime Minister, Mohamed Mossadeq, engineered by the CIA's Allen Dulles and an eccentric British scholar of Greek, an ex-Special Operations Executive operative - "Monty" Woodhouse by name - with a few guns and a pile of dollars. And the Iranians remember well, how back came the Shah of Iran, our "policeman" in the Gulf, the King of Kings, Light of the Aryans, descendant of Cyrus the Great, to stretch out the young Iranian men and women of the resistance on the toasting racks of their Savak torturers.

Nor have the Iranians any real intention of putting Faye and her chums in front of any court. They'd far rather have the Brits chomping through their "nan" bread on Sky TV, courtesy, of course, of Tehran's Arabic "Al-Alam" channel. And did you notice that little "exclusive" label in the top left-hand corner of the screen when Rifleman Nathan Summers decided to go public?

How the Iranians love mimicking their oppressors. When the gold braid of the Ministry of Defence produce a complexity of maps to prove our boys were in Iraqi waters, the Iranians produce a humble coastguard with a Minotaur map to show that they were in the Iranian briney.

The Union Jack still flies on their rubber boat - but the Iranian banner floats above it. No one has yet explained, I notice, why our boys and girls in blue carry rifles on their sailing adventures if their duty is to hand them over when attacked. Are we actually trying to supply the Revolutionary Guards with more weapons?

But behind all this lie some dark questions - with, I fear, some still unknown but dark answers. The Iranian security services are convinced that the British security services are trying to provoke the Arabs of Iran's Khuzestan province to rise up against the Islamic Republic. Bombs have exploded there, one of them killing a truck-load of Revolutionary Guards, and Tehran blamed MI5. Outrageous, they said. Inexcusable.

The Brits made no comment, even when the Iranians hanged a man accused of the killings from a crane; he had, they said, been working for London.

Are the SAS in south-western Iran, just as the British claim the Iranians are in south-eastern Iraq, harassing the boys in Basra with new-fangled bombs? Will the Americans release the five Iranians issuing visas to Kurds in Arbil whom they locked up a couple of months ago. No, says Bush. Well, we shall see.

There is a lot we do not know - or care to know - about all this. In the meantime, however, it will be left to Blair, Bush and the merchants of the SKY-BBC-CNN-FOX-CBS-NBC-ABC axis of shlock-and-awe to play the Iranian game. Will they put Faye on trial? Will our boys be threatened with execution? Answer: no, but be sure we'll soon be told by the Iranians that they are all spies. A lie, needless to say. But Blair will fulminate and Bush will roar and the Iranians will sit back and enjoy every second of it.

The Iranians died in their tens of thousands to destroy Saddam's legions. And now they watch us wringing our hands over 15 lost souls. This is a big-time movie, the cinemascope of political humiliation. And the Iranians not only know how to stage the drama. They've even written Blair's script.

And he obligingly reads it to cue.

New TV footage shows captured servicemen

Footage of two of the 15 captured Royal Navy personnel was broadcast on Iranian state television last night.

The television station Al-Alam released footage of the captives standing in front of a map of the Persian Gulf where the sailors and marines were captured 10 days ago.

The captives' speech was not initially broadcast, but one of the station's newscasters said they had "confessed" to entering Iranian waters "illegally", according to translations.

The British government maintains that the vessel was in Iraqi waters. The footage was condemned by the Foreign Office last night as "unacceptable".

The two men were seen pointing to a picture of a boat, while the voiceover described how the servicemen had left HMS Cornwall on 23 March and arrived into Iranian waters in a small boat at 10am local time. The broadcaster said hostages were receiving "good and humanitarian treatment".

The same station last week released footage of Faye Turney, the only woman among the captives, and Nathan Thomas Summers, whose footage was released on Friday.

The Ministry of Defence said they would not be identifying the servicemen. The families of all the personnel are understood to have been contacted last night to alert them of Al-Alam's plan to release the footage.

Prior to the release of the footage, Foreign Office minister Des Browne had indicated that a diplomatic solution to the crisis could be sought when he said that "direct bilateral talks" with Iran over the capture were ongoing.

Helen McCormack

Iran outlines conditions for release of UK sailors

Julian Borger and Ian Black
Tuesday April 3, 2007
The Guardian

Iran's most senior diplomat, Ali Larijani, called for a "delegation" to rule on whether a British naval patrol entered Iranian waters last month before his government would release the 15 marines and sailors it is holding captive.

Laying out what appeared to be a vague road map for the freeing of the British personnel, Mr Larijani said that, if it was found they had crossed into Iranian territory, there should be an apology and they would then be released.
He gave some conciliatory signals in an interview with Channel Four News, saying the Iranian government was not interested in putting the detainees on trial, but warned that might change if Britain attempted to impose more international pressure on Tehran. "We are not interested in this issue getting more complicated," said Mr Larijani, the secretary-general of Iran's national security council.

Iranian TV has shown previously unseen footage of four of the 15 British service personnel held captive. Photograph: Getty

"Our interest is in solving this problem as soon as possible. This issue can be resolved, and there is no need for any trial. There should be a delegation to review the case ... to clarify whether they have been in our territorial waters or not."

Mr Larijani did not specify whether the delegation he was requesting should be British or international, but he did say the issue should be solved "bilaterally". His remarks could be a response to an offer by Britain to send a team of naval experts and diplomats to discuss how to avoid a repetition of the crisis. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said last night: "We are still studying Dr Larijani's remarks.

"There remain some differences between us, but we can confirm we share his preference for early bilateral discussions to find a diplomatic solution to this problem. We will be following this up with the Iranian authorities tomorrow, given our shared desire to make early progress."

However, British officials are adamant that the team of experts would not be going to negotiate the captives' release, and would focus on the future rather than on the March 23 incident. They said proposed talks would ideally improve the current atmosphere, but would not include acceptance of Iranian claims that the British patrol had entered Iranian waters.

Earlier in the day, Iranian media noted "positive changes" in negotiations with Britain over the crisis. They said that was the reason they did not broadcast "confessions" of a territorial incursion by all 15 captives, which Iran says it has recorded. So far, four have been shown "admitting" that they had entered Iranian waters.

The head of Iran's parliamentary committee on foreign policy and national security, Allaeddin Broujerdi, seemed to echo the British suggestion for talks yesterday when he told state radio: "There is a need for a bilateral agreement to prevent such an event in the future."

In seeking the captives' release, Britain has been seeking help from Iran's allies. Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, has intervened, the Guardian has learned. Mr Assad raised the issue with the Iranian foreign minister, Manuchehr Mottaki, at the Arab summit conference in Riyadh last Wednesday. It came shortly before Mr Mottaki told an Iranian TV station that the captured sailor Leading Seaman Faye Turney would be released shortly. The move followed a direct appeal to Damascus by Sir Nigel Sheinwald, Tony Blair's chief foreign policy adviser.

It came only five months after Sir Nigel visited the Syrian capital in an attempt to persuade Mr Assad to distance himself from Iran. British officials have been impressed by Syria's readiness to help in the dispute with Iran, and have singled it out for praise in recent days.

John Bolton, the Bush administration's former ambassador to the UN, yesterday criticised the British government for its "weak" and "passive" response to Iran over the captives. "If I were sitting in Tehran, I would say, 'I played this card against the Brits and they did everything but plead with me to give these people back'," he told CNN. "I think that tells the Iranians quite a bit about European resolve."

Former FBI agent reported missing in Iran (cnn.com)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States is investigating a report of a former FBI agent missing in Iran, officials said Monday.

The U.S. citizen went missing more than a week ago and hasn't been in touch with his family or employer, the State Department said.

The missing man retired from the FBI about 10 years ago. As a former FBI agent, he followed organized crime in the United States, but was not involved in intelligence matters, said Paul Bresson, an FBI spokesman.

The American is believed to have been in Iran working for an independent author/producer, trying to set up an interview, according to several senior U.S. officials.

"We don't see any linkage whatsoever between this case and any other ongoing cases that may have been in the news recently," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, apparently referring to the 15 British sailors and marines who were seized by Iran more than a week ago. (Full story)

Officials said the man went missing on Kish Island off the southern coast of Iran. The island is part of a free-trade zone under Iranian authority. Under most circumstances, non-Iranian nationals do not need a visa to visit Kish.

The State Department is in touch with the man's family and is in the process of sending a message to the Iranians through the Swiss government, the officials said. The message is a "welfare and whereabouts inquiry," which is a request for information about a missing American citizen.

At this point, McCormack said, U.S. officials have no indication the man is being held by any Iranian entity.