LONDON,8 April 2007 — The United States offered to mount aggressive air patrols over Revolutionary Guards bases during Iran’s standoff with Britain but was rebuffed by London, The Guardian newspaper reported yesterday.
Citing unnamed diplomatic sources, the daily said that Pentagon officials offered a series of military options, but Britain told them to keep out of the affair and instead tone down armed forces activity in the Gulf.
One of the options involved combat aircraft patrolling over Iranian bases to show how serious the incident was, the newspaper said in a front page story. On March 20, three days before the 15 British Marines were seized at gunpoint in the Gulf, a second US aircraft carrier group arrived in the region.
At London’s request, the two carrier groups, totaling 40 ships plus aircraft, changed their exercises to make them appear less confrontational, the newspaper said. Britain also asked the United States to ensure it kept the rhetoric low key, The Guardian said.
It reported that a consensus was emerging among British, Iraqi and Iranian officials as to what happened when the Royal Navy sailors and Royal Marines were seized — namely that it was not something planned by Tehran.
London maintains they were mounting a routine anti-smuggling patrol in Iraqi waters, while Tehran insists they trespassed into Iranian waters. “My best guess is that this was a local incident which became an international incident,” a British source closely involved in the standoff told the newspaper.
A senior Iranian source close to the Revolutionary Guards told The Guardian: “If this had been between Iranian and American soldiers it could have been the beginning of an accidental war.” The source claimed that British forces had illegally entered Iranian waters three times in three months leading up to the capture.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s foreign minister said Iran’s decision to release 15 British sailors would hopefully herald a “new spirit” between the Islamic Republic and the West, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported yesterday. “Logic says this could be a start of easing the confrontation,” Ahmed Aboul Gheit told the Al-Rai newspaper in an interview in Cairo.
Iran is currently at odds with the West over its nuclear program and suspected support for Shiite militias in Iraq. Iran denies charges by the West it wants to make nuclear weapons, insisting its program is for peaceful purposes, but the UN Security Council voted last month to impose new and tougher sanctions on Iran because of its refusal to freeze uranium enrichment.
Aboul Gheit said he saw a “big possibility for a political settlement” over Iran’s disputed nuclear program and advised against any sort of military response.
Asked if Wednesday’s release was part of a “deal” whereby the US would free Iranians it was holding in Iraq, Aboul Gheit said: “Not a deal, maybe a special understanding for releasing detained individuals on both sides.”
“But what is important,” he added, “is that this spirit, which we hope will be a new spirit, continues.”
Although all sides denied any sort of deal, the release came one day after a senior Iranian diplomat, held for two months in Iraq, was set free. Jalal Sharifi was seized in February by uniformed gunmen in Baghdad. Iran has blamed the US for the diplomat’s abduction, but the Americans have denied these accusations.
Also, the release immediately followed word by the US military that it had allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit five Iranians captured by US forces in Iraq in January under disputed circumstances. The US has said it is still considering an Iranian government request to visit the five.
Sharafi said yesterday he had been “tortured” by his captors, among them US intelligence officials, the state news agency IRNA reported in Tehran. He said he was “subjected to different forms of torture day and night. I was kidnapped on a Baghdad street while shopping by officials who had Iraqi Defense Ministry ID cards and were riding in American forces vehicles.”
