Iran Kidnaps 15 British Sailors: Does Anyone Care?
In 1979 a young firebrand, Mahmoud Ahmadinijad, participated in the interrogation and humiliation of the American hostages.
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It’s 2007 and, an older but no wiser, Mahmoud Ahmadinijad is now president of Iran and he is presiding over the interrogation and humiliation of British hostages.
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Iran has illegally detained (kidnapped) 15 British sailors and marines, and hardly a peep from the Bush administration, while the United Nations waxes impotent by expressing “grave concern”.
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Were the 15 British sailors and marines planting mines in Iranian waters or otherwise engaging in an act of war against Iran?
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No, they were on a rubber dinghy inspecting merchant ships in what Britain and Iraq claim were Iraqi waters. Iran insists the Brits were in Iranian waters.
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Even if the British sailors were in Iranian waters, if Iran were a civilized country, it would have merely escorted the hapless Brits out of their territory.
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But Iran is manifestly not a civilized country, and it is deliberately thumbing its nose at the West.
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England must not make the mistake of placing the lives of 15 sailors above the interests of the whole country. When young persons join the military, they know they may be required to sacrifice their lives for the good of their country.
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Prime Minister Tony Blair must not appease or negotiate with Iran; he must let the mullahs know they will pay a heavy price if the soldiers are not immediately released.
I write a weekly column for a small town newspaper in Virginia, and I also write for several Web sites. Please leave a comment or send me an email at: rreyes4966@aol.com | More from Robert Paul Reyes
Stumble It!
April 1st, 2007 at 12:21 am
That does not seem like a good enough reason for them to kidnap the British sailors. I wish them well.
April 1st, 2007 at 12:22 am
I better rephrase what I just said: I wish the British soldiers well.
April 1st, 2007 at 12:56 am
I am apalled at the Iranian action and apalled at the newscasts of these sailors apologising for being in Iranian waters, ‘trespassing’. They have been in Iranian hands for five minutes and already they have ‘rolled over’. I am apalled at lame-duck PM Blair making quacking noises but doing nothing other than talking to the UN and the EU. What a craven Commander in Chief he is. Are there no Englishmen left? Bandar Abbas airfield should be a smoking pile of junk by now.
April 1st, 2007 at 2:57 am
amfortas – I usually agree with most things you write but this time I have misgivings.
Do you not think that the Iranians are doing this stunt deliberately in order to provoke an over-reaction by British and\or coalition forces – this would then likely foment extreme reactions within arab and muslim nations as they made their sympathy for the Iranians felt.
As for the commnets about the servicemen and woman that was just insulting and low.
April 1st, 2007 at 5:47 am
One thing I have yet to understand is that there was a British Frigate or some sort of gunship right there at the time and they did nothing.
Blair had better take the same action Isreal did when their soldiers were kidnapped (which they still are holding hostage I believe) and attack w/o mercy because what Iran did IMO is an act of war or at least a hostile act and deserves a hostile response. If they dont Iran will do this again, with no reprocussions why wouldnt they.
God help everyone if Iran completes their nuclear ambitions.
I see in the future if they do a very large glass parking lot once called Iran.
April 1st, 2007 at 6:59 am
TigerMan says: “As for the comments about the servicemen and woman that was just insulting and low”.
Maybe. But I have expectations of servicemen that after just a few days and looking like they have been as they said ‘treated well’, that they would refuse point blank to ‘admit’ that they were ‘trespassing’. Every serviceman worth his salt knows that in active service he is going to face great difficulties and needs every bit of moral courage they can muster. Maybe my expectations are too high. They were drilled into me in my twenty years in the British forces a long time ago. Maybe things have changed. Maybe I have to expect to be disappointed more.
April 1st, 2007 at 8:46 am
The British seemed to hope that this would be seen as a mere accident by the Iranians and the sailors would be released. If the frigate had fired on the gunboats, then the sailors would have definitely died and a fight broke out. More people would have died. Also Iran would use such an event as the West declaring war on them.
I am sure Iran is definitely using this as a stunt to provoke the UK. But by phrasing it as trespassing they will be able to sell it to other countries that they were the victims, and that the UK is a horrible aggressor. Many Western countries won’t believe, but any Anti-Western countries will lap it up. Iran could also be using this as another stall tactic for the whole nuclear ordeal. I wonder sometimes if they are close to having a Nuke and they need another year or so for it to be ready. After that with them armed with Nukes it will be much harder to deal with them.
Now the UK has released GPS data showing that they were not in Iranian waters, so I don’t know why so many people are so hesitant.
April 1st, 2007 at 10:23 am
blather notwithstanding the point is is one on ones own side or what? The search for multilateral fairness is pointless for no-one will be in agreement. If one doesn’t press home their side of the story with authority and consequence, the consequence is the opposing side will take the lead and define the terms. The longer one delays a smackdown especially if it is warrented , the bigger the smackdown gets, and the less likely the outcome. Spare the rod, spoil the child. As true now as then…
April 1st, 2007 at 10:40 am
Come back Margaret, all is forgiven!
(And, by the way, you were right about the French).
As for Ronnie, we could use some of his advisors right now.
April 1st, 2007 at 12:27 pm
amfortas – I also admit being disapointed by the apparent compliance of the captured service personel but I also have to bear in mind the extremes that the current regime in Tehran may be cabable of. For example how long would the average ’soldier’ hold out if say he\she was shown a graphic video of a beheading and then told that was going to be their fate if they didn’t fully comply?
What I *AM* angry about is that the Brits let their guard down by going ahead with inspections when their ‘Top cover’ (helicopter surveilance and protection) was temporarilly out of action. On that score it seems that no lessons were learned from the last time brits were captured by Iranians whilst about their lawfull duty!
On a more optimistic note I think this time decisive action WILL be taken but with a timing that suits our agenda rather than that of the provoking Iranians. The UK with it’s long history of punching above it’s weight cannot allow such provocations to go unpunished.
I am very far from a supporter of Tony Blair – but todays situation cannot be compared to the takeover and invasion of the Falkland Isles by the Argentinians – that invasion was motivated by the need for gaining support by a military dictatorship desperate to gain some popularity within their own national boundaries. With the Iranians there is an undoubted gameplan that stretches way beyond Iranian national boundaries.
April 1st, 2007 at 7:04 pm
TigerMan, whatever happened to ‘Name, Rank and number and nothing else’? These guys are giving press conferences with charts on walls.
So there may have been threats to behead although Iran has never done that and it would demonstrate to the world that Iran is naught but a bunch of the worst terrorists. There may have been any threat you want to imagine but that is no different from the experience of any captured soldier since time before time.’If indeed there were threats to behead someone then there is little liklihood that these people will ever be released to tell of such threats. How long would the average soldier hold out, you ask. I don’t know. There used to be an expectation of quite a long time. How long now, I have no idea but from this example it is about three minutes.
I hadn’t heard of the ‘no air cover’, in fact the original reports had the British showing GPS from the helicopter that was hovering over the site.
April 1st, 2007 at 7:59 pm
They got rid of Name, Rank, & Serial Number after the Korean & Vietnam wars. It didn’t work. Military today are trained to resist to the utmost of their abilities.
I can say in the U.S. military you receive hostage & POW training. Ultimately anyone can be made to talk. The best you can do is give bad information or send secret messages or signs.
The problem I have is it appears that these guys gave up without a fight when taken and they are serving as propaganda actors without the beating marks and injuries that I would think you would put up with before stooping to this.
The Brits I fought with in Afghanistan were a lot tougher than these folks appear to be, but maybe we don’t know all the facts. It’s easy to sit in a comfy chair and pass judgement.
April 1st, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Also, I know I am echoing everybody else. But I just wanted to add that the actions of Iran are disgusting and I hope Blair grows a pair real quick and deals with these monsters on a level they understand.
Iran has one refinery that provides gasoline to their entire country. I think it might be time to let them know they may not have it for long.
Taking out that refinery would not hurt the world oil market at all as most countries just want the crude oil and do their own refining.
Iran’s threat to stop exporting oil is a complete bluff. Oil is the ONLY source of revenue for that entire country. If they stop exporting oil it will only hasten the end of their dictatorship.
April 1st, 2007 at 8:57 pm
I appreciate your perspectives, Patriot. But this – “They got rid of Name, Rank, & Serial Number after the Korean & Vietnam wars. It didn’t work. Military today are trained to resist to the utmost of their abilities” , may apply to American forces but not wholly to British. I served well after the Vietman era and the ‘Name, Rank and Serial Number’ was the norm right up to when I left the service.
I can appreciate the need to be ‘devious’ when captured, even to try ‘messages’ in such public displays. But they must be darned obscure if they are trying this, as buggered if I can see them. Maybe the quality of service people today in the Royal Navy has decined. That is what I suspect.
April 1st, 2007 at 9:23 pm
“Maybe the quality of service people today in the Royal Navy has decined. That is what I suspect.”
You may be right, but I certainly hope you are not. As I said, the Brits I fought with in 2001 & 2002 were a lot tougher than this. A few of them were SAS and tough as nails.
April 1st, 2007 at 10:44 pm
SAS and other ‘Special Forces’ are ‘different’. These are the soldiers of the future. Highly educated, tough as nails, as you say, dedicated, independant, reliable, fearsome indeed. Davis Stirling was a visionary.
Not many people know this but 22 SAS, the Originals, were named after a fake para battalion invented by a British Major in North Africa who wanted Italian Prisoners in a POW camp nearby to smuggle out false information about a huge force of paras that the Brits didn’t have. All the major actually had at his disposal was one borrowed plane and lots of five foot diameter parachutes he made in his office that he chucked out of the plane with small bags of sand attached, close to the camp. They looked like a mass drop miles away. (one unfortunate side effect was that the Germans, thinking that the British had perfected parachuting, formed their own Parachute troops, the idea for which they had abandoned some years before!)
Stirling had the devil’s own job convincing the General Staff to let him form a group that could para behind enemy lines and act independantly. His first mission was a disaster and he lost most of his 60 odd men. The few that survived dropping in a storm (freak weather) carried on and wreaked more havok in a week than a battalion could have achieved. They destroyed more German aircraft in two days than had been in the previous year.
No-one in the ‘real’ Army wanted the SAS. The Americans in particular distrusted soldiers who made up their own rules as they went along and the Officers took orders from NCOs. SAS was disbanded after the war and reformed as a ‘Private Army’. They were quickly resurrected! An American Officer on attachment with them took the idea back to the States and he too found tremendous opposition. It took JFK’s personal impramatur to get the Special Forces going and their reputation nearly died in Vietnam. Irregular discipline takes an awful of of self-discipline. The American Spec Forces are amongst the best in the world now. But it took a while for them to catch up.
April 1st, 2007 at 10:45 pm
That’s David Stirling. Typo.
April 1st, 2007 at 11:21 pm
In one camp that I spent a few monts at there were SAS, Navy Seals, Team Delta, lots of Army Rangers, and some guys they just called “Dod employees”. There was quite the friendly rivalry between each of the groups.
Because they knew who was there the Al Qaeda & Taliban stayed far away from our camp.
Many locals were very superstitous and since we mainly attacked and operated at night they called our special operators a word that basically translated into “vampire”.