DUBAI, 24 March 2007 — Iranian naval vessels yesterday seized 15 British sailors who had boarded a merchant ship in the Gulf, British and US officials said. Britain immediately protested the incident.
The British government summoned the Iranian ambassador, Rasoul Movahedian, to the Foreign Office for a meeting which a department spokesman described as “brisk but cordial.” Sir Peter Ricketts, the senior civil servant in the department, demanded “the safe return of our personnel and equipment,” the spokesman said.
Iran said it seized the sailors because they had illegally entered its territorial waters. “British Charge d’Affaires Kate Smith was summoned to the Foreign Ministry to receive a firm protest from Iran against the illegal entry of British sailors into Iranian territorial waters,” a ministry statement said.
“This makes a number of times that British sailors have illegally entered Iranian territorial waters at Arvand Roud. They were arrested by border guards for investigation and questioning,” the statement added.
Arvand Roud is the Iranian name for the Shatt Al-Arab waterway that separates Iran from neighboring Iraq.
The US Navy, which operates off the Iraqi coast along with British forces, said the British sailors appeared unharmed and that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard naval forces were responsible.
Britain’s Defense Ministry said the British Navy personnel were “engaged in routine boarding operations of merchant shipping in Iraqi territorial waters,” and had completed a ship inspection when they were accosted by the Iranian vessels. “We are urgently pursuing this matter with the Iranian authorities at the highest level,” the ministry said.
A US official said the incident occurred just outside a long-disputed waterway called the Shatt Al-Arab dividing Iraq and Iran. It came as tensions were running high in the Gulf after Iran’s defiance of UN Security Council orders to rollback on its nuclear program and US allegations that Iran is arming Shiite militias in Iraq.
US officials had expressed concern that with so much military hardware concentrated in the Gulf, just such a small incident could spiral out of control and trigger a major armed confrontation. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said the Bush administration was monitoring the situation.
Oil prices rose by over a percent to $63.68 a barrel after the incident.
Unlike the United States, Britain has diplomatic relations with Iran. But London backs Washington’s calls for tough sanctions against Iran unless it abandons nuclear plans which the Western countries believe are aimed at producing weapons.
The two countries also accuse Iran of fomenting violence in Iraq. Iran insists its nuclear plans are peaceful and denies it supports militia in Iraq.
“Hopefully there has been a mistake that has been made and we will see early clarification and an early release of my people,” Commodore Nick Lambert, commander of the British fleet in the area, said in a television interview aboard HMS Cornwall.
