Times Tabloid Journalism Over Iranian "Hostages"

If you read my post yesterday about the neocon willingness to sacrifice 14 British seamen and one seawoman for a chance at a do-over of the '79 Iranian hostage crisis, then you will know that I was asking for some Persian language help with a claim by the Murdoch-owned London Times which gained a lot of attention from the American uber-right. The Times claim was that:

FIFTEEN British sailors and marines arrested by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards off the coast of Iraq may be charged with spying.

A website run by associates of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, reported last night that the Britons would be put before a court and indicted.

Referring to them as “insurgents”, the site concluded: “If it is proven that they deliberately entered Iranian territory, they will be charged with espionage. If that is proven, they can expect a very serious penalty since according to Iranian law, espionage is one of the most serious offences.”

I thought it highly suspicious, in this day, that the London Times hadn't mentioned the website by name or url. It surely had to be either the official Iranian president's website or his unofficial blog.

Well, one of Newshog's readers responded to my request for help. In an email, he wrote:

I checked both of them and there is nothing about the espionage. There
is not even a line about the British seamen incident.

The only thing related to espionage trial is a student group who asked the government to prosecute the sailors as spies. They are just a group of students and not a part of the government. Some Iranian hard-line sites published their request. Actually now when I am looking for that news, I can't even find it.

It looks very like the Times is indulging in British-style tabloid journalism. Here's how it works - based on an actual case heard by the indpependent Press Complaints Commission back in the '90's over reporting by the Time's tabloid sister paper. A journalist wants a salacious quote to drop into his story about paganism in the UK. He turns to his colleague at the next desk and says "would you say pagans were Devil worshippers?" His colleague answers "Sure, if it helps." The story includes the line "Some people say that pagans are just Devil worshippers". The Commission can't touch it because the colleague is definitely "people".

So the Times took the fact that some student group had called for an espionage trial, as reported on an Iranian site not officially part of the governemnt and came up with the sentence "A website run by associates of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, reported last night that the Britons would be put before a court and indicted." Technically, it is true - but it is so misleadingly economical with the truth it might as well be an outright lie.

Today, the Times is at it again, reporting that the Iraqi government now supports UK claims that the seamen were detained while in Iraqi territorial waters but, misleading by ommission, leaving off any mention of earlier reports by the Iraqi military commander in the area and Iraqi fishermen who were witnesses that the boats were on the Iranian side of the line. The change of Iraqi tune should surely be the real story there.

On that crucial subject of where exactly the seizure took place, which as Rubber Hose blog points out is the one that really counts and from which every other flows, I want to quote someone who has actually been there. Andy, the Non-partisan Pundit saw duty in the area during the Gulf War, attempting to enforce the sanctions against Iraq. In comments at The Glittering Eye he writes:

there are long-standing territorial water (TTW) disputes in the northern Gulf, particularly around the Shatt. Even the Shatt itself has been under dispute, but it is now agreed by both Iran and Iraq that the border runs in the middle of the waterway and that all shipping traffic may pass without tariffs or harassment.

But this incident did not take place in the Shatt, but in the norther Persian Gulf. It’s entirely possible, and in fact likely, that the specific location the Brits were taken in is a disputed area that both Iran and Iraq (and possibly Kuwait) claim as their own. The Brit “admission” they were in Iran’s waters could simply be the Brits saying, yes, we were at these coordinates, and then the Iranians, since they claim those waters, spinning it into a “confession.”

Another possibility stems from Iran’s use of straight baseline measurements to determine it’s TTW’s and not the recognized standard baseline measurement from the mean low-water mark. The US and UK and most other countries do not recognize Iran’s straight baseline claims. It’s possible the Brits were in one of the straight baseline areas, though in my experience during the 1990’s, our ships only entered them to conduct freedom-of-navigation operations to deligitimize the Iranian claims. As a side note, with certain exceptions, innocent passage of all ships, civilian and military, is allowed in a nation’s TTW.

All the data I’ve seen, including the conflicting “eyewitness” reports, indicate the Brits were taken in a disputed area.

...The area around the Shatt-al Arab is particularly complex, not only because it’s a river delta, and therefore the “land” there frequently changes, but also because of the numerous islands and the oil and gas fields that each country (Kuwait, Iran and Iraq) would like to exclusively exploit.

Even so, I would note, Andy thinks that "it’s highly unlikely this wasn’t an intended operation designed to take hostages, for lack of a better term." I would agree but add that I think this was always a locally-organized seizure - which means the "hostages" were always intended simply as a statement against the Coalition presence and current hawkish sabre-waving, rather than as any form of "bargaining chip"

Update Former UK ambassador Craig Murray weighs in:

...in international law the Iranian government were not out of order in detaining foreign military personnel in waters to which they have a legitimate claim. For the Royal Navy to be interdicting shipping within the twelve mile limit of territorial seas in a region they know full well is subject to maritime boundary dispute, is unneccessarily provocative. This is especially true as apparently they were not looking for weapons but for smuggled vehicles attempting to evade car duty. What has the evasion of Iranian or Iraqi taxes go to do with the Royal Navy? The ridiculous illogic of the Blair mess gets us further into trouble.

Incidentally, they would under international law have been allowed to enter Iranian territorial waters if in "Hot pursuit" of terrorists, slavers or pirates. But they weren't doing any of those things.

Having said all that, the Iranian authorities, their point made, should now hand the men back immediately. Plainly they were not engaged in piracy or in hostilities against Iran. The Iranians can feel content that they have demonstrated the ability to exercise effective sovereignty over the waters they claim.

Any further detention of the men would now be unlawful and bellicose. One of the great problems facing those of us striving hard to prevent a further disastrous war, this time on Iran, is that the Iranian government is indeed full of theocratic nutters.