DAR AL HARB / ISLAM - THE WEST / IRAN: PUSHING ITS LUCK OR SHOWING HOW WEAK THE WEST IS ?!?

Iran Is Pushing Its Luck
With seizure of British marines, Tehran might be going too far
[Opinion]
by Alan Mota

On March 23 the British government announced that 15 marines from the British navy were seized by Iranian forces while making routine inspections on merchant ships going to Iraq. According to the British government, they were outside Iranian waters when the Iranian forces escorted their ships to national waters and detained them. The Iranian government has so far refused to speak on the issue, and news agencies throughout the world have their reports based solely on the British minister of defense's side of the story.

This confrontation -- if it can be described this way -- has happened in one of the most tense moments so far in the Iran-West relationship. A draft resolution on Iran's nuclear program in the U.N. was finally scheduled for voting, and it's supposed to happen on March 24.

The speeches on both sides -- the Western, mostly America and Britain, and the Iranian -- have been getting harsher. And while the more radical types don't rule out the hypothesis of war, most people know that, for lack of feasibility more than for peaceful intentions, an attack on Iran is out of question.

But everything has a limit. The religious leader of Iran -- Ayatollah Khamenei -- already stated that if a resolution against Iran's nuclear program -- which he would consider "illegal" -- is passed, that would open room for Iran to act the same way.

"We have acted according to international norms [in the nuclear sphere] until recently, but if they [the West] take illegal measures, we will have a commensurate response," Khamenei said.

Obviously, these are considered provocations by the Western powers, which prompts them to act harder. However, even though Iran as well as the U.S. and Britain will refuse to admit it's part of the political game --- there's has been a certain "accord" that no country will go past threats or a few sanctions.

Although such an "accord" probably didn't predict military intervention. On one side, the U.S. army raided an Iranian consulate in the Iraqi city of Arbil, seizing computers and documents and detaining Iranian staff. Now, with the Iranian bust on British marines, the situation is escalating to a point of retaliation after retaliation, and no one knows where this might end.

The British Foreign Secretary had a meeting with the Iranian ambassador in the U.K., a "brisk but polite" meeting, according to her, where she made clear that Britain wants the immediate return of their men. But this doesn't mean that the tension was reduced, even though it's very unlikely that the Iranian government will mistreat or torture the British soldiers.

The consequences of the Iranian act have also gone outside the political sphere. The price of the crude oil barrel rose 1 percent on March 23 to US$62 a barrel, which totals a 4.5 percent rise on the May oil contracts only this week. Even though the prices are still lower than a year ago -- 2.6 percent --, this was the highest close for a front-month contract since Dec. 22. As it is widely known, the oil market is one of the most sensitive to the ups and downs of the unpredictable political scene in the middle east. And unfortunately, as it was seen in the 1970s and 1980s, they're usually not wrong.

It's still too early to get any conclusion out of Iran's action, especially because no Iranian authorities have spoken so far (at the time of writing), regardless of the British authorities' cries for the release of the seized sailors. But it is clearly an act with a tint of political challenge, especially with the voting of the draft resolution on the near horizon.

Iran is said to be taking on the American/British stalemate on Iraq, pushing further and further for their interests with no fear of retaliation, a strategy knowingly used also by North Korea. This has been shifting attentions from Iraq to Iran, and the Iranian government might be unwillingly putting itself into place as the "new enemy" in the international political scene, ahead of its "evil axis" partner North Korea.

This way, Iran might be pushing its luck against the immobility of the Western powers, and this can have dire consequences for Iranian citizens, the world markets and, ultimately, world peace.


Pertinent Links:

1) Iran Is Pushing Its Luck