Iran crisis is Blair's true legacy
By MAX HASTINGS
30th March 2007
The Royal Navy wouldn't have put up with any crap from the Iranians in the 1840s when Lord Palmerston was Foreign Secretary (and much better than the soppy Margaret Beckett we have today)
One day in 1848, the Royal Navy warship HMS Fantome dropped anchor off the Greek port of Patras, and dispatched a boat to the shore to take on water.
Greek relations with Britain were then poor, following several incidents in which British subjects had allegedly been mistreated.
Local police in Patras detained the midshipman in command of the boat. He was held overnight before being grudgingly released.
Palmerston, Britain's Foreign Secretary of the day, professed outrage. It was he who invented what became known as '"gunboat diplomacy".
At first, the Greek government refused either redress to the British subjects - a pretty disreputable lot, as it happened - or an apology for the insult to Fantome's midshipman.
A powerful British fleet was cruising off the Dardanelles. Palmerston dispatched the Royal Navy to blockade first Piraeus, then every Greek port, and to seize any ship which attempted passage.
After a few weeks under siege, the Greeks caved in. The injured British subjects received handsome compensation. The little midshipman got his apology.
Compare and contrast that episode with the experience of 15 British service personnel, illegally seized by the Iranians, held prisoner and threatened with a show trial.
The US and Britain deploy hundreds of thousands of men, hundreds of combat aircraft and the most powerful fleet in the world in Iraq and its surrounding waters.
Yet all this might can contribute nothing to retrieving the hostages - for hostages are, of course, what the British prisoners have become.
There is no credible military option. Nobody who remembers President Jimmy Carter's disastrous 1980 attempt to rescue the 52 Americans taken hostage in the Tehran Embassy would contemplate a repeat performance.
A major military operation would be needed, dependent on American planes and helicopters.
No matter how brilliant is the SAS, nor what intelligence can be gathered about the British prisoners' place of detention, the risk of failure is far too great. It could precipitate open conflict between Iran, Britain and America.
The captives' freedom must turn, therefore, on diplomacy. What is the United Nations for, if not for this? Here we have a case in which European solidarity should be assured, an outrage against international law and basic standards of civilised behaviour.
The seizure happened eight days ago. Yet it took almost a week for Europe's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, to denounce it, and for the French government to be persuaded to join calls for the servicemen's release. So much for all Blair's wasted wooing of the EU.
At the United Nations - and remember that the Royal Navy's patrol was acting under a UN mandate - Britain has struggled to achieve an agreed wording for a Security Council resolution condemning the Iranian action.
The Russians baulked at accepting that the British party was in Iraqi waters, despite the satnav evidence presented by the Navy.
Many other countries simply don't want to know. Publicly or privately, they think the British have no business to be in Iraq or its offshore waters.
They shun the American and British involvement in the country as if it was some contagious disease, which in a sense it is. Fearful of infection, third parties keep their distance and their silence.
More than a few nations are frankly frightened of the Iranians. The Tehran regime is one of the most ruthless in the world, the foremost sponsor of global terror. Iran is widely admired in Islamic societies for its defiance of the West.
To states with no desire to posture internationally, it seems most prudent to avoid words or gestures which might antagonise Iran's wild men.
Anything for a quiet life, and to persuade terrorists to pitch their camps elsewhere.
That leaves British diplomats forced into urging, cajoling, pleading with governments around the world to give support in the political offensive to regain the sailors and marines.
On Thursday night, the UN Security Council expressed "grave concern" over the detention of the Britons and called for the crisis to be resolved as soon as possible.
But the statement, agreed by all 15 members after more than three hours of negotiations, was a setback for Britain because it fell short of "deploring" Tehran's actions and demanding the detainees' immediate release.
As predicted, the statement was weasel words. How they must be enjoying themselves in Tehran today! Once again they have flaunted their contempt for Western power, once again they have demonstrated the impotence of their foes.
Days, even weeks, of pleasure lie ahead for them, playing on the emotions of the British people as if they were strumming some devil's lute.
The prisoners, bewildered and frightened by the uncertainty of their fate, can be paraded on television to apologise and 'assisted' to write letters home as often as their captors choose.
Do you remember how, in 1975, Britain's then Foreign Secretary, James Callaghan, was obliged to pay a personal visit to the monstrous Idi Amin of Uganda to secure the release of his former acolyte, Major Bob Astles? That humiliation may seem trifling, by comparison, with the dance that Tehran will lead the Blair government, before we get back our sailors.
The truth is that Iran is emerging as one of the big winners of the US and Britain's disaster in Iraq.
The country is run by one of the nastiest governments on earth.
Its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a fanatic who proclaims that Hitler's Holocaust was a fantasy, invented by Jews to justify creating their state.
He denies Israel's right to exist, supports Palestinian and Iraqi terrorism, and is of course committed to building an Iranian atomic bomb.
Once upon a time, the United States could have expected to build a global coalition to contain Iran, perhaps even to take military action against it, which would have commanded overwhelming support.
Yet, so low has respect fallen for the US, and especially for its president, that the international community prefers to stand back, to let Washington and London take the strain.
Iran brilliantly exploits its dual status as part-Islamic crusader, part-victim of Western imperialism. There is talk of economic sanctions, if Tehran persists with its nuclear programme in defiance of UN resolutions.
If Iran's government was rational, it would fear an international blockade. Its economy is in chaos. Its huge oil industry is capable of meeting only 60 per cent of the country's own fuel needs.
Yet so strongly is the tide of Islamic fervour flowing, that it seems doubtful that sanctions would bring down the militants. It is hard to punish a masochist.
President Ahmad-inejad and his supporters relish every Western threat. Their power and influence feed on enemies.
George Bush's extravagant rhetoric over the past six years has fed matchwood onto the flames of Iranian defiance.
A state of siege is just what the mullahs and militants need to massage their nation's paranoia.
It is a fine mess. In Iraq, Bush and Blair have inflicted such crippling damage upon the US and Britain's standing in the world that we find it hard to muster a quorum of support against a murderous rogue state which has kidnapped 15 of our sailors.
Tony, however, wants us to look on the bright side.
Amid a national humiliation, he has tried to give us something to laugh about, to bring comfort to those poor young men and one woman confined in an Iranian jail. He has placed British policy in the hands of Margaret Beckett.
Ms Beckett, you will remember, was the minister who proved incapable of administering subsidy payments to Britain's farmers in her last job as Secretary for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Only this week, a House of Commons Committee delivered a devastating report on her performance.
It is plain that she should have been sacked.
But Tony loves to tease. Instead, he made Beckett Her Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
Here was a woman who knew less about abroad than the average booze-cruiser. Her idea of travelling to broaden the mind is to take her benighted caravan to Bognor. Yet Blair made her responsible for Britain's foreign policy.
The only rational argument for the appointment was that, since our foreign policy was shipwrecked by slavish support of Bush and by the Iraq engagement, it scarcely mattered who was in charge of the flotsam that was left.
But now, suddenly, foreign policy seems important again.
Diplomacy, and only diplomacy, can retrieve the captives from the Iranians. It is a scandal that it should be placed in the hands of a minister who is the stuff of satire.
Yet there is worse. A glance at any of the British internet websites which invite comment on the sailors' seizure reveals a significant number of respondents who doubt the truth of the Royal Navy's report about the boat's position on the Shatt al-Arab waterway where the incident took place.
However critical many of us are about Blair's lies, it seems unthinkable that the Navy could lie on this issue.
Yet here we see people in our own country, who now have so little trust in our leaders that they prefer to believe the mad regime in Tehran.
If such doubts are being expressed within Britain, who can be surprised by scepticism abroad?
Here are the bitterest fruits of Blair's years of lies and dodgy dossiers; some British people are prepared to believe the word of the mullahs in preference to that of their own leaders.
So far, in the face of humiliation, the Government has done just one sensible thing. It has persuaded the Bush administration to say as little as possible.
The only certainty in this drama is that, if the U.S. seeks to escalate the confrontation, come Christmas we shall still be waiting to get our people back.
The way forward lies in patient, low-key diplomacy - a chance to exploit the fact that some of the warring factions inside Iran's government do not want to push this incident too far. The more Iran perceives this episode as a trial of strength with the West, the less likely is an early resolution.
WE HAVE to keep hoping that, once the Iranians have had their propaganda banquet, they will see an advantage in behaving 'mercifully'. Like all delinquents, the Tehran leadership yearns for respect.
Having demonstrated its muscle by kidnapping the sailors, it can show its 'generosity' by releasing them.
That, of course, is the best-case scenario.
The alternative is that the Iranians perceive advantage in keeping this awful game going. If that proves the case, only sustained pressure from the international community will eventually get our people back again.
When this business is over, hard questions should be asked in Britain. Who was responsible for exposing the sailors within reach of one of the most reckless nations in the world? This was a kidnapping waiting to happen.
It has laid bare the bankruptcy of British foreign policy, shackled to America's Iraq calamity. Blair has forfeited respect in the Muslim world, where a decade ago our influence remained substantial. He has lost not only the battle to turn the British people into Euro-enthusiasts, but also his campaign to make this country a major force in Europe.
Many governments around the world will forgive a nation for abusing its power, but not for failing in the attempt to do so. By Blair's blind support for George Bush even into the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, he has identified Britain with defeat as well as with disrepute.
It will take years to repair the damage which he has inflicted on our reputation for prudence and honest dealing.
On this 25th anniversary of the Falklands War, he may even claim to have thrown away the great name Britain's forces gained there, by their battlefield triumphs. We no longer look like winners.
As Gordon Brown returned last night from a day cavorting in Afghanistan, playing out his pigeon-chested photo-call as prime minister-in-waiting, there is only one question to which we need an answer from him: what will he do differently, to rescue this country from the international shambles which Blair will soon bequeath to us?
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