By MICHAEL SETTLE, Chief UK Political Correspondent
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s refusal to co-operate with international inspectors over his country’s nuclear programme has provoked a high-stakes diplomatic row, with the United Nations voting today on the tightening of sanctions imposed in December.
Tehran has also been accused by Britain and the US of aiding insurgents in neighbouring Iraq, both by failing to seal its borders and by actively arming and funding militia groups.
Yesterday’s incident appears, on the face of it, to be a repeat of the capture of six Royal Marines and two Royal Navy sailors on the Shatt al Arab waterway in 2004. They were freed in a few days, but not before a tense confrontation in which the men were blindfolded and paraded on Iranian TV.
After the crisis, Geoff Hoon, then Defence Secretary, said the crews had been "forcibly escorted" into Iranian waters. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said British diplomats accepted the men had strayed into Iranian territory.
Even in 2004, diplomatic relations between Britain and Iran were already strained. But that incident occurred under an administration more amenable to co-operation than that of President Ahmadinejad, whose election in 2005 led to a dramatic deterioration in relations between Tehran and the West.
Sir Richard Dalton, the UK ambassador to Iran during the earlier incident, said the latest crisis demanded "firm but patient diplomacy".
"This looks like a much clearer case of a wholly unjustified action and the claims now being made need to be investigated, and the same approach adopted – of firm but patient diplomacy," he told Channel 4 News.
HMS Cornwall arrived in the Gulf about 10 days ago. Commander James Woods said there was always the possibility that the ship could come under attack.
"For that we have received an awful lot of training, and the ship’s company are well versed in all that, and the responses they need to do to whichever form of attack, and should it arise," he said.
The oil platforms guarded by HMS Cornwall are critical to Iraq’s economy and account for up to 90% of its gross domestic product, but the seizure of British service personnel may not be so much about oil as the issue of Iran’s nuclear intentions.
Hossain Abedini, member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said seizing British sailors was Iran’s desperate way to try to put pressure on Western nations to prevent the adoption of a second UN Security Council resolution over its disregard for international demands that it suspends its uranium enrichment activities.
"Through such hollow shows of force, the mullahs are trying to cover up the increasing levels of internal turmoil they are facing and the wave of public discontent which has arisen in recent months in various Iranian cities," he said.
Iran’s UK envoy, Rasoul Movahedian, yesterday met Peter Ricketts, the Foreign Office permanent undersecretary. A spokesman said they discussed British efforts in the UN Security Council to pass a new resolution for sanctions against Iran.