Iran’s “act of piracy”
The seizure by Iranian commandos of a British-flagged tanker in the Persian Gulf has intensified the growing confrontation between the UK and Iran. The commandos were lowered from a helicopter onto the deck of the Stena Impero in the Strait of Hormuz. The British frigate HMS Montrose was sent to the scene, but arrived too late to intervene. The tanker’s 23-man crew of Russians, Filipinos, Indians and Latvians was captured unhurt. Tehran said the seizure was in retaliation for Britain’s detention of an Iranian tanker off Gibraltar earlier this month, ostensibly for carrying oil to Syria in breach of EU sanctions.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt accused Iran of an “act of state piracy” and insisted the Stena Impero had been in Omani waters when seized. He called on Britain’s EU allies to form a joint naval taskforce to protect commercial shipping in the Gulf. Britain has so far resisted pressure from Washington to join a similar US-led taskforce.
What the editorials said
Britain’s response to the threat to its shipping in the Gulf has been feeble, said The Times. It should have insisted that all red ensign ships entering dangerous waters have an escort – although, owing to years of budget cuts, that would have been a hard ask of the Royal Navy. The real risk now is of the UK being dragged into a broader conflict between the US and Iran, said The Guardian. This latest spat will no doubt be resolved by both sides agreeing to release the tankers that each has seized. But the wider danger remains that Britain’s new Prime Minister will pull the UK closer to the US and away from the EU allies fighting to keep the nuclear deal alive.
Yet the fear that Boris Johnson will act as Trump’s “poodle” overlooks the fact that President Trump himself, unlike the hawks in his administration, hankers for talks with Iran’s leadership, said the FT. Johnson’s best course of action would be to welcome Trump’s efforts to coordinate an international naval mission – code-named Operation Sentinel – to protect shipping in the Gulf; but also to join forces with the EU in encouraging Trump to pursue a diplomatic initiative.
What the commentators said
If there’s one thing about Iranian foreign policy that should be “hardwired into the brain of every politician and diplomat in Britain”, said Patrick Cockburn in The Independent, it’s that what you do to the Iranians they will do back to you. So what possessed those politicians and diplomats to okay the seizure of the Iranian tanker off Gibraltar? Couldn’t they see retaliation was inevitable? The answer is simple, said Simon Tisdall in The Guardian. They “stumbled into an American trap”. When US satellites spotted the tanker heading for Syria, Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, tipped off the British authorities, who, to Bolton’s delight, then sent in the Marines to seize it. “Excellent news,” Bolton tweeted on hearing the UK had taken the bait. He had reason to be happy. Now, “Britain blindly dances to the beat of Bolton’s war drums”. But at least Hunt, in possibly his last act as Foreign Secretary, has signalled the UK’s resolve to cooperate with the EU on defence, and side with Brussels on how to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions, said Patrick Wintour in the same paper. “By distancing itself from the US on the issue of a naval protection force, the UK does something to reassert its independence.”
Let’s get a few things clear, said Roger Boyes in The Times. It isn’t Trump who’s the problem in the Middle East; it’s the Revolutionary Guard that controls the Iranian regime. The real aim of the 2015 nuclear deal was to coax it back into the community of law-abiding nations; but Iran’s military adventurism in Syria and its attempts to destabilise Iraq have shown how utterly futile that hope was. And the idea that sensitive EU diplomats might now turn the tide by cutting Tehran some slack is equally delusional. What is working, by contrast, are the tough sanctions being applied by the US. Tehran is getting desperate: it’s running out of money; it fears a war with the US; its dream of regional supremacy is dying. All the more reason to hang tough with the US, not loose with the EU. It’s time the Foreign Office stopped “playing Mr Nice Guy”.
What next?
China, one of the biggest buyers of Iranian crude, has vowed to counter any moves by the US to impose sanctions on Chinese oil companies that break the embargo on Iranian oil imports. The Trump administration says it will be targeting the Chinese firm Zhuhai Zhenrong as part of its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.
Hunt has suggested that the Iranian tanker could be released if Tehran agrees that its cargo won’t be sent to Syria. But an early settlement is unlikely, since a court in Gibraltar has ordered that the ship be detained for another month.