“Jaw, Jaw, Not War, War!”
Despite delays, retractions, accusation and counter accusation, it seems as if diplomacy will prevail and the eleven British hostages held against reason will surely be released, if not today, then one day fairly soon. But when they are released, what should Britain’s response be?
According to a recent poll nearly 70% of Britons would be prepared for the nation to go to war to get our people out. It’s an alarming finding given that the first casualties of such a war would most likely be the captured service personnel, whom Iran could hardly avoid putting on trial. I rarely agree with Tony Blair but much admire him for the way he, his ministers and advisors, have reacted with firmness and diplomacy to the sitation. Who knows, maybe in some perverse and paradoxical way we will find Britain and Iran closer at the end of this crisis. I hope so because Iran and Britain already share some political history.
On 5th May, 1980 a siege at London’s Iranian Embassy was put to an end by 30 masked commandos from Britain’s elite special forces. No Iranian diplomats died in the action but five Iranian terrorist gunmen were killed, and one was arrested. The Iranian Prime Minister of the day said:
“We did not surrender, we became victorious.”
Our service personnel are not being kept in the same conditions as the staff of the Iranian Embassy in May 1980. I suspect that their conditions are rather better than those of those prisoners who are being detained without prospect of trial by the U.S. government at their complex at Guantanamo Bay, but of course I could be wrong.
The rights and wrongs of disputes about ideas, and ideals are complex. No one of any intelligence can believe that the current crisis between Britain and Iran has much to do with a rubber boat slipping into Iranian waters, yet much of the past week has been taken up discussing the precise location of the British boat when it was taken.
If, for one moment, we are prepared to accept the Iranian version of events, and the boat was 0.5 kilometres inside the Iranian border when it was taken, it becomes clear that the Iranians are talking about the equivalent of the length of four football pitches. The Wimbledon Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club from North to South is considerably longer than the distance the British rubber boat is claimed by Iran to have intruded into its waters. It goes without saying that seas, unlike maps, have no lines printed upon them.
So why then might Iran have acted in such a provocative manner? I was puzzled until I found within the pages of the novel ‘The Shape of Snakes’ by Minette Walters, (purchased second hand from my new source of literature the Turunç Cat’s Protection League stall), the following passage: “It’s the poor white syndrome . . . the lower you are in the pecking order the more important it is to have someone beneath you.”
When I read this the veil lifted and I could clearly see that in many ways Iran and Britain although seemingly very different share even more than is obvious. In 1739 the Shah of Persia invaded India getting as far south as Delhi. Alexander was there before him, and the British have been there since and now all three have become crumbled empires. Contrary to what many westerners think Iran isn’t a third-world country run by dangerous religious zealots. It has a culture that is older, and in many ways more sophisticated than that of Britain and it wishes to protect it. The border we are looking at is the difference between the right to drink beer whilst watching village cricket, vs. the right to pray on a Friday and call the faithful five times a day from a minaret. Neither is wrong but they are evolved from very different conditions and histories. We may well have been better able to relate to the Americanised style of the last Shah, but his regime wasn’t a perfect one.
So what do I think Britain should do when the service personnel come home. You will have to wait until tomorrow to find out.
