Iran needs friends these days, badly. For months a fierce debate has raged in the international community about engaging with Tehran over Iraq and about how to prevail on it to curtail its nuclear weapons programme. Only days ago the US made a major concession in agreeing to meet the Iranians in the context of a regional conference on the stabilisation of Iraq. Which makes all the more extraordinary the hamfisted diplomacy Iran has manifested following the arrest last week by it of 15 British marines and sailors in the Shatt al-Arab waterway.
Yesterday Tehran paraded on TV a prisoner's "confession" and apology to the Iraqi people and issued the third of a series of letters purportedly written freely by the captured British sailor Faye Turney which says she was "sacrificed due to the intervening policies of the Bush and Blair governments". She continues in a similarly improbable pidgin-English, in a style reminiscent of the 1930s Moscow trials, concluding: "It is now our time to ask our government to make a change to its oppressive behaviour towards other people". The plausibility of Iran's case has certainly not been helped by such crude propaganda, nor by the fact that it has offered two conflicting versions of where the arrests took place.
Moreover, even if Iran were correct that the British personnel were in its territorial waters, its actions in detaining them for a prolonged period are grossly disproportionate to the offence allegedly committed. Certainly, it is the right of every state to protect the inviolability of its borders, but the Iranians had been monitoring the activities of the UN-mandated British marines and could clearly see that the small group represented no real threat to Iran - the incursion might have warranted perhaps a short diplomatic note and a prompt escort back into Iraqi waters. Nothing more.
A similar incident in 2004, when Iran seized eight British sailors and marines, holding them for three days, was widely regarded as an attempt by hardline Revolutionary Guards to force the hand of the more moderate government of president Mohammad Khatami and the current seizure may well have a similar rationale. US forces in Iraq recently detained five men linked to the Revolutionary Guards and the latter may well have seized the British sailors to secure their release. Mixed signals from Tehran and confusion about whose writ runs muddies the waters.
The British have now sought and are entitled to international support. The UN Security Council has expressed "grave concern". Yesterday EU foreign ministers meeting in Bremen also rowed in with a welcome call for "the immediate and unconditional release" of the sailors and unequivocally backed the British insistence that the arrest was in Iraqi waters. Iran's sense of justification has no doubt been fuelled by its awareness that, despite the UN mandate, world public opinion does not believe the British should be there anyway and has no sympathy for its predicament. But piracy is no way to make the point.