One rash act from Iranians could set all hell loose
THE crisis between Britain and Iran seems to have reached deadlock.
London refuses to release the Iranian tanker held at Gibraltar en route to Syria in breach of European Union sanctions, while Tehran continues to hold the British-flagged tanker Stena Impero.
Now, the decision by our new Government to throw in its lot with the Americans and join a security mission to protect shipping in the Persian Gulf suggests matters are at a critical stage.
Our European partners have at best navies that, like our own, have suffered from years of under-investment. However, taken together the frigates and destroyers of Europe would have been a force capable of escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz and possibly deterring more Iranian seizures.
That, after all, was the goal of the previous foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt.
But politics rather than military power has tipped the EU against getting involved. European signatories to the 2015 landmark nuclear deal with Iran – led by the Obama administration but rejected by Donald Trump last year – are desperate to keep it alive.
The EU’s dislike of Trump and its belief that a bad Iran deal was better than no deal is why, for instance, Germany’s foreign minister has said its navy won’t join any US-led convoys in the Gulf. Such convoys could, Germany argues, provoke Iran’s hardliners.
Thus far, the Iranians have certainly been careful to avoid offending the EU. For its part, the UK continues to insist it supports the deal which gives Iran relief from economic sanctions as long as the country’s nuclear programme is curbed despite this new alliance with Trump’s America.
On the plus side it puts Britain firmly on the side of a superpower and, it must be said, morally in the right. The seizing of the Stena Impero by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was an act of piracy in the raw.
Yet being right with a powerful friend on call should not blind us to the risks that persist to British shipping and to the many British expats living in the Gulf states.
It will take only one rash act – an anti-ship missile fired whether the ayatollahs have agreed it or not – to unleash hell in the Gulf with a global economic backwash.
So far the Iranians have shown no sign of backing down. Even ‘moderates’ such as the foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif have been getting more forceful in their denunciations of Trump and the sanctions his White House has imposed.
Maybe the sight of the US navy’s firepower accompanied by as many as three British warships will break the impasse.
But let’s hope that even as the White Ensign flutters alongside the Stars and Stripes, both sides are still talking to Tehran behind the scenes.