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March 23, 2007
Iran gets belligerent
Cmdr. Kevin Aandahl of the Fifth Fleet said the British crew members were intercepted by several larger patrol boats operated by Iranian sailors belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, a radical force that operates separately from the country's regular navy.The Iranian boats normally carry bow-mounted machine guns, while the British boarding party carried only sidearms, Aandahl said. No shots were fired and there appeared to be no physical harm done to any personnel involved or their vessels, Aandahl said.
The seizure of the British vessels, a pair of rigid inflatable boats known as RIBs, took place in long-disputed waters just outside of the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway that divides Iraq from Iran, Aandahl said. A 1975 treaty gave the waters to Iraq and U.S. and British ships commonly operate there, but Aandahl said Iran disputes Iraq's jurisdiction over the waters.
"It's been in dispute for some time," Aandahl said. "We've been operating there for a couple of years and we know the lines very well. This was a compliant boarding, this happens routinely. What's out of the ordinary is the Iranian response."
Aandahl said the U.S.-led task force has touchier relations with the Revolutionary Guard, which often ignores normal maritime operating traditions, than with the regular Iranian navy.
. . . . n June 2004, six British marines and two sailors were seized by Iran in the Shatt al-Arab. They were presented blindfolded on Iranian television and admitted entering Iranian waters illegally, then released unharmed after three days.
Analysis from Rusty Shackleford and his resident Persian expert Garduneh Mehr.
So where is that exactly?
On the river, as close as Google Maps will let us go.
Judith | 03/23/07 at 10:55 AM | Categories: - Iran
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Comments
IIRC, there was an incident very much like this at the beginning of the Iraq War.
Robert Schwartz | March 23, 2007 08:34 PM
Casus belli? Don't you wish.
The Other Alan | March 25, 2007 11:40 AM
