Iran has told the Foreign & Commonwealth Office that the captured sailors and marines are "fit and well", whilst Tony Blair has vaguely warned of a "different phase" if diplomatic efforts failed to secure their release. This phase was later clarified as merely making public some more information about the location of the British sailors at the time of capture.
The Iraqi foreign minister have also asked for the hostages' release and confirmed that the British were in Iraqi waters. The diplomatic crisis is being discussed around the world as commentators attempt to explain the motives behind the Iranians' actions, the following is a selection of the main talking points.
Tim Butcher explained in The Daily Telegraph the historical precedent for territorial disputes in the Persian Gulf: "Iranians refer to the Persian Gulf being fed by the Arvandrud river, while Iraqis and other Arabs refer to the Arabian Gulf and the Shatt al-Arab. In the 17th century, Ottomans and Persians fought over the river and its associated eyots, peninsulas and coastal territory."
US News has picked up on a military report showing that this is not an entirely isolated exaple of Iranian aggression recently: "According to a U.S. Army report out of Iraq obtained by U.S. News, American troops, acting as advisers for Iraqi border guards, were recently surrounded and attacked by a larger unit of Iranian soldiers, well within the border of Iraq. The report highlights the details: A platoon of Iranian soldiers on the Iraqi side of the border fired rocket-propelled grenades and used small arms against a joint patrol of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers east of Balad Ruz."
A website linked to Ahmadinejad declared of the "insurgents": "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."... despite this being against Article 46 of the Geneva Convention as the British were in military uniform.
An editorial in today's Wall Street Journal concludes that Iran will respond to force: "Serious sanctions would target the country's supply of refined gasoline, much of which is imported. It is worth recalling, however, that Iran was at its most diplomatically pliant after the United States sank much of Tehran's navy after Iran tried to disrupt oil traffic in the Persian Gulf in the late 1980s. Regimes that resort to force the way Iran does tend to be respecters of it. It is also far from certain that Western military strikes against Revolutionary Guards would move the Iranian people to rally to their side: Iranians know only too well what their self-anointed leaders are capable of."
Finally, the Henry Jackson Society today summed up the situation best: "The kidnapping of fifteen British sailors by Iran is an unacceptable act of belligerence, which cannot be ignored. A failure on the part of Britain, the rest of the European Union, and the United States to condemn this action and respond assertively will weaken the West’s position in the Middle East. It will also damage the morale of our Armed Forces, and our reputation globally, while emboldening the regime in Tehran. We must retrieve our sailors using all the tools at our disposal, and ensure that Iran learns to adhere to international norms of behaviour."
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