Keep Your Eyes on Iran

There's more than meets the eye with Iran's recent arrest and release of British sailors picked up in the strategic border area of Shatt al-Arab. Why doesn't Iran want Iraq to succeed? How stable is this Islamic republic, which is on the brink of becoming a nuclear power?

by Cecil E. Maranville

A few weeks ago, Iran captured eight sailors of the British Royal Navy in the Shatt al-Arab ("Stream of the Arabs"), claiming they had crossed into Iranian waters. The Shatt al-Arab, Avrand Rud in Persian, is actually the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. These historic waterways converge for their final 120 miles (200 kilometers) en route to the Persian Gulf. The rivers' strategic value to both Iran and Iraq is enormous.

Disputes over the boundary between the two countries go back centuries, with the first major treaty to resolve the matter signed in 1639. The agreed upon border was a snakelike line that followed ancient tribal customs and loyalties. But even then, the land on both sides of the waterway just above the Gulf belonged to people from the same tribe, the Marsh Arabs.

Wars over the boundary erupted sporadically through the centuries until shortly after World War I, when the middle of the river was set as the borderline.

The bitter and bloody eight-year war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s was fought over this floating boundary.

Most media reports about the conflict involving the British sailors say they were on a training mission, showing Iraqis how to patrol against oil smugglers and smugglers of foreign insurgents. Both are serious problems. Reports suggested that Iran's seizing of the sailors was a trumped-up reaction to the British (as well as French and German) accusation that Iran was not complying with the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections of its nuclear program.

But most reports seem to miss the implications of the fact that no Iraqis were detained when Iranian forces arrested the Brits. It stands to reason that there would be Iraqis involved if the British were training them at the time.

U.S. foreign policy and Middle Eastern affairs expert Michael Ledeen suggests a totally different scenario: "The Brits were laying down a network of sensors to detect the movement of ships toward major Iraqi oil terminals" ("Ready for $60-a-Barrel Oil?" June 23, 2004).

Read the full article at www.wnponline.org/wnp/wnp0407/eyesoniran.htm

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