Shifting sands and a poorly defined maritime border could give Britain and Iran enough room to save face in their 12-day stand-off over a group of detained British sailors and marines, border experts say.Which is what both I and Craig Murray have been saying all along. It's echoed by another expert Reuters spoke to, Richard Harvey, the head of admiralty and casualty practice at a major law firm who says that the original reason for disagreement could also just as easily be a reason for agreement.
Because the maritime boundaries off the Shatt al-Arab waterway, drawn up in 1975 but not updated since, are open to a certain degree of interpretation, Britain and Iran could "agree to disagree" over exactly who crossed into whose territory.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Tuesday the next 48 hours could prove critical as both the British and Iranian governments have sought to moderate their positions after several days of heightened tension.
"It's certainly not an irresolvable dispute," said Martin Pratt, the director of the International Boundaries Research Unit at Britain's Durham University.
"The fact that the coastline is constantly shifting means more issues would need to be taken into consideration than if the coastlines were more stable and there was agreement on exactly where the baselines along the coast were."
Both the Iranian and British governments appear to have softened their stances in the past 24 hours, with each highlighting their desire to reach a negotiated solution.
Pratt said that suggested both realized they couldn't afford to be too insistent about an issue that comes down to who says where exactly an incident occurred on a disputed boundary.
"You can't be dogmatic about a maritime boundary that hasn't been properly agreed," he said.
On Monday, Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, called for a "delegation" to determine whether the British sailors were in Iran or not, but didn't define what sort of delegation.Here's hoping both sides see sense.
...We're not looking for confrontation over this and actually the most important thing is to get the people back safe and sound. And if they want to resolve this in a diplomatic way the door is open," Blair told a radio station in Scotland.
On a related theme, there's a lot being made in the US about a Patrick Coburn article for the Independent that's hardly made a ripple in the UK - perhaps because Brits don't automatically assume everything has to be about America.
Cockburn's article bases itself on the say-so of Kurdish leaders who have every reason to talk up an Iranian threat - so that the US will keep troops in their region to protect them against Turkey. It also tacitly assumes the Iranian seizure of Brits was pre-meditated - something for which there is no actual evidence other than the ravings of the MeK's political propogandists. Finally, I find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with Jeff Goldstein - Cockburn deliberately confuses a causal connection with an intentional one in pursuit of his own agenda - he could have just as easily have written that the death of the dinosaurs was the "starting pistol" for any modern crisis he likes, since without that death humans wouldn't be the dominant species. If he'd studied at Cambridge instead of Oxford maybe he wouldn't be so cavalier with his logic.
Similiarly, John Hawkins at Right Wing News is giving logic a short shrift today in pursuit of one of his bugbears. This time the kneejerk cause is anti-Europeanism rather than Cockburn's anti-Americanism. How come when the US walks its own path in defiance of international opinion and allies' wishes it is looking after its own national interest but when European nations do the same it reveals "the worthlessness of European allies" and that the US will have to go it alone (to preserve US national interests)?
Patrick, John, it doesn't always have to be about America!
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