Another week another “crisis” involving Iran. The details that led to 15 British sailors being captured on March 23rd in the Persian Gulf are disputed. The British government says that the two Royal Navy boats patrolling in the Persian Gulf were in Iraqi waters when an Iranian patrol captured them and illegally detained them. The Iranians claim the sailors illegally entered Iranian waters and were promptly arrested. The truth is usually the first victim in war and the reaction from both sides has been bellicose to say the least.

Tensions were already high with British involvement in wars on two nations bordering Iran. The Iranians have always defended their territorial rights in the Persian Gulf but this policy has been enforced strictly as a legacy of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980’s.

The rhetoric has been egged on enthusiastically by the tabloid press in both nations with calls to arms and comparisons to Hitler, but to what effect? A dialogue of the deaf. Are the sailors free? What is known is that the 15 sailors are alive and well and being treated relatively humanely. The diplomatic calculations are complex because the Iranian state is a complicated entity. The President is only one element of power amongst the factions ruling Iran but the nation as a whole has taken offence at the way the British government has gone about securing their release.

As well as using the wrong tone, our government has squandered any good will with so many nations as a result of our disastrous foreign policy. Attempts to gain support for our position at the UN resulted in the security council issuing a watered-down if unanimous statement voicing “grave concern” at the capture of the sailors. Crucially the resolution did not say that the British forces had not strayed into Iranian waters, something the British had originally asked for resulting in howls of derision in our newspapers labelling the UN being dysfunctional. Perhaps this is something we can all agree on the UN is dysfunctional but it has always been thus. Our papers don’t complain so loudly when the UN fails to call for the immediate cessation to the bombing of Lebanon by Israel for example. We have ceded the moral high ground by slavishly following the US into the quagmire of Iraq. In January five Iranians were seized by US troops in the Iraqi city of Irbil. They are being held illegally. President Bush issued an order to the US military to kill or capture any Iranians in Iraq. Any objections in our press to this policy? Not a word. Indeed this incident may have had a direct bearing upon the Iranian action against our troops.

As is always the case in incidents like this there are always at least two parallel tracks being pursued. The public statements that both governments make (largely for domestic consumption) and the private discussions that go on behind the scenes. Hopefully the private discussions will be more nuanced than the megaphone diplomacy carried out in public.

MPACUK call on the Iranian government to release the British sailors immediately and unconditionally and to put a halt to the shrill rhetoric emanating from various factions of the Iranian state. There has been too much heat and not enough light. It would also be an immense gesture of goodwill to release the five Iranians being held by the US (although, predictably, this has been ruled out by the US). It has become hard to ignore the fact that our government is recklessly squandering our standing around the world by tying our own foreign policy too closely to America’s. Who can ignore the contrasting images of Margaret Beckett, our Foreign Secretary, refusing to call for a ceasefire when Israel was busy bombing Lebanese civilians in 2006 and her prompt call for the release of our sailors? Surely life is life. If we continue in this vein we will reduce our ability to purse our goals in our own best interest.