British Sailors in Iran revisited

In June of this year I had a letter published in The Guardian regarding the British sailors caught by Iran in disputed waters. A friend has just told me that the letter was also published in The Australian. The version in The Australian goes like this:

SOME much needed perspective is necessary to understand the current crisis over Iran’s capture of the British naval personnel. Perhaps the best way to begin to understand it is to reverse the roles. Imagine if a bunch of Iranian sailors were captured somewhere between the high seas and British territorial waters. What would the media’s response be? The obvious answer is that they had no right to be there in the first place. They would most certainly be paraded on international television. The British Prime Minister would condemn this latest act of aggression by Iran. And Iran would profess that it’s quite unlawful for Britain to detain sailors who were merely undertaking a routine exercise on the high seas.

Now this scenario immediately appears absurd because one cannot think of a circumstance where Iranian military assets would be roaming around the waters surrounding Western urope. And that absurdity is at the heart of the present situation.

Lost in the present debate is the simple question: what right does Britain have to be in the Persian Gulf in the first place? Please, spare me the patronising and naive talk about UN Security Council resolutions, of maintaining international peace and security, or even that the Iraqi Government, which was installed by the Americans and the British, invited the British into their waters. None of this would have happened if Western nations had not interfered in the geopolitics of the region.
Mustafa Qadri
London, UK

This version is a little different to the one in The Guardian. For example, my reference to the European powers drawing up the map of the Middle East after the First World War has been omitted. Still it's nice to know I got my two-cents in.

Anyway, looking through The Australian's blog for this topic I noticed there were quite a few responses to my letter, all of them quite opposed to my position. Below are a few samples but before you read them I should note mine was the only letter published by the newspaper that was critical of the American presence in the Middle East:

Samantha Jones of Fremantle Aus (04 April at 12:47 AM)

Excuse me, Mustaf Qadri??

None of this would have happened if Iran hadn’t - without any provocation - invaded sovereign US territory via it’s embassy and held it’s staff hostages. None of this would have happened if Middle Eastern Muslims - with the apparant approval and support of Iran - not invaded US sovereign territory and murdered close to 3000 people. None of this would have happened had Saddam been prepared to do what all other nations do, and submit to UN weapons inspections, thus relieving the world of the fear of an insane murdering tyrant having something horrible and nuclear.

Iran needs to do what it most obviously wont - excercise a little humility and acknowledge its own contribution to why UN and western forces are in the region.

A little historical context is needed. The past casts a long shadow.

Hozchelaga of Sydney (04 April at 08:34 AM)

Mustafa Qadri, as long as apologists for Islamic fundamentalists continue to live and breathe in London, United Kingdom, there will be no need for Iranian military assets in Western Europe.

Jack Bauer of Brisbane (04 April at 08:55 AM)

Mustafa Qadri’s letter reinforces why muslims can never be a part of western nations. His logic is that the middle east is surrounded by muslims therefore it is muslim and outside the realm of the rest of the world. Sorry Mustafa but UN resolutions, an invitation from the Iraq government (that 72% of the population decided to vote for freely and fairly - its called democracy but you cant have that can you!) and the fact the British were in Iraqi not Irananian waters (proven conclusively) are all legitimate reasons for British presence. What Iran has done is an act of war. Your attitude reinforces the belief of many westerners that Islam is incompatible with our society. I hope to see a political party raise this in the coming election.
As for Iran the response is simply - Britain/US/rest of the west should tell Iran what you have done is an act of war. There will be no sanctions, no diplomacy. You have 48 hours to release our sailors unharmed or we will launch repeated missle strikes on your country and bomb you back to the stone age. See the thing about a bully is once pushed they never fight back. The problem with Iraq was we stuck around to take part in the mess - should have topeled Saddam and then left them to fight amongst themselves. Lets not make the same mistake with Iran - remove the government so they are no longer a threat to the west and then let muslims do one of the few things they know how to do well - blow each other up! It is about time people removed the veil of political correctness and started to speak up!

Alice of Sydney (04 April at 09:59 AM)

When have Western govts ever paraded prisoners of war on tv Mustafa Qadri? As I recall, even when Iraqi soldiers surrendered in droves in the first days of the Iraq war, the Americans wanted to cease showing images of them on tv as it is indecent and humiliating.
Dont try to turn this into a ‘American/British- foreign- policy-backlash’ case. It is actually quite simple...as the letter writer before you says, rogue states such as Iran are just thugs.
Tony Letford, as ideal as it would be to be able to deal with the Iranians for the release of the sailors, George Greenberg is right. These people only understand the language of violence, they dont understand diplomacy.
Mike Carrette sums it all up nicely with one sentence.

Christian (04 April at 01:13 PM)

Sorry Mustafa but being there under a UN sanction is the end of it. If you feel patronised by being confronted with a truism, so be it.

As for the rather naive rhetorical question about why western navies are floating around the Gulf whereas the Iranian navy would never be in the North Sea. Western nations have centuries of history in empre building, exploring, projecting power, whatever you want to call it. In the past century, the same western nations have fought major wars to keep themselves and others free. They liberated large tracts of the middle east from Axis hands. On the other hand, I struggle to identify much of any use to the world at large that has been contributed to by any middle eastern country in modern history. So, assuming the Iranian navy found their way to the North Sea, they wouldn’t know what to do once they got there!