The IRGCN playing the fool again in the Shaat al Arab:
Fifteen British Navy personnel have been captured at gunpoint by Iranian forces, the Ministry of Defence says.
The men were seized at 1030 local time when they boarded a boat in the Gulf, off the coast of Iraq, which they suspected was smuggling cars.
The Royal Navy said the men, who were on a routine patrol in Iraqi waters, were understood to be unharmed.
The Foreign Office has demanded the immediate and safe return of the men, who are based on HMS Cornwall.
Just saw the Cornwall‘s CO on CNN – he’s insisting that his boarding crew was acting at the request of the Iraqi government and within Iraqi territorial waters. Whatever else you might say about the Royal Navy these days, their navigational skills are second to none.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy has been shadowing coalition ops up there even before OIF kicked off.
Seizing British sailors at sea cannot in any sense be thought good for Iranian national interests, but now the regime will of course have to go through face saving measures on the way towards letting them go, meaning that once again Iran’s national interest has been hijacked by radicals at a delicate time.
This is the danger in brinksmanship – not that the players might deliberately decide to initiate hostilities, but that they might accidentally stumble into them. No one ever learns anything.
Stupid is as stupid does. In light of the other actions taken against Iranian agents provocateur in/around Iraq, one wonders if this might indeed ratchet the response up another notch or two, again.
- SJS
I wonder how this will weigh on the UN visit Mahmoud Ahmad’man is to make this weekend.
This is probably a good thing, in the long run. They will give them back, but in the interim, they do good work for God and Country……
In the short term though, it sucks.
I saw this sort of thing first hand when I was on the KAA Oil Terminal in ’05. The KAAOT is only 1 mile from IR TTW and there’s a sunken crane just on their side of the line that they use as a base to watch us.
The KAAOT is in a good fishing area, and has tons of dhow traffic passing close by, creating a huge headache for the ships protecting it – also makes it easy(er) for the Iranians to slip into the traffic flow and violate Iraqi waters.
Luckily the KAAOT is the broken terminal and the ABOT is much further away from IR TTW.
Had lunch on one of the UK ships that was protecting the terminals. There was a short uncomfortable moment when the CO asked why our ship was named Bonhomme Richard.
Oh yeah, UK and Oz ships are dry when they’re that far north. I know it broke some of my travelling companion’s hearts.
“He added that the Royal Navy personnel should be given credit for a “very cool” response and not escalating the situation.”
Maybe too cool… How much longer will this crap go on before someone gives them a bloody nose or, a splitting headache (much more likely)?
I bet the Skipper of the Cornwall was absolutely itchy to fire on them.
Almost sounds like a Tonkin Persian Gulf kind of incident, if’n you ask me.
V/r,
-SJBill
I tend to agree with Skippy. Perhaps this will give someone (US, Brits, or Oz)the excuse we’ve been looking for to fire a shot’cross their bow. Dunno….I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
“Almost sounds like a Tonkin Persian Gulf kind of incident, if?
“Almost sounds like a Tonkin Persian Gulf kind of incident, if’n you ask me.”
I don’t recall anybody on either side being captured in the unfortunate Tonkin gulf incident.
No, but both appear to be deliberate provocations close to home (Vietnam then, Iran now), which may / may-not elicit a response of force.
This incident is most unfortunate.
Q. Where’s the nearest carrier(s)? Methinks we have several in the region. Will this incident bring them in play?
[BTW, Mr. Howard, nice site.]
V/r
-SJBill
Remember the USS Pueblo.
I do — Karl B. was a high school classmate of mine. Likewise, I remember the USS Liberty and a few other events of that time.
Mu opinion– we didn’t adequately respond following either of the incidents.
v/r
-SJBill
I had a moment where hope glimmered, and I thought the British might respond appropriately. But it faded. I can see that “staying cool” and not escalating will carry the day once again. The old schoolyard lesson that a bully must be faced and dealt with seems completely forgotten.
Shipmates,
The greater question is why didn’t the skipper of HMS Cornwall engage the Iranian vessel(s) and attempt to recover his men?
Obviously the Iranian vessel(s) were comitting an act of Piracy, if not an act of war, and committed this act outside their own waters.
The Commanding Officer should have engaged the hostile vessel at once, rather than standing by while members of his crew were kidnapped. That he did not do so, should be cause for his immidieate release from command of the vessel, and a Court of Enquiry should be assembled at once to consider the matter, both in regards to the officer’s conduct, and as an example to other officers of the vigilence and determination required when placed in command of a warchip, and other men’s lives.
As a former Navy man, I find his conduct reprehensible, and dangerous, in light of the prescedence it sets for protecting one’s own crew.
It’s one thing to lose good men in combat. It’s another to stand by and watch them taken.
Respects,
I am not going to be too quick to criticize the CO until we know more of the facts and what ROE he was operating under.
sjbill,
I’m with you on the Tonkin vignette..One must seize opportunity when presented.
Sorry folks. This is gonna happen on our watch..eventually.
b2
Sea Wolf,
Shipmate, i must respectfully disagree. Had this been an action on land, and a section of Marines was attacked while conducting a recon mission, the Platoon leader, the Comapny Commander, the Battalion Commander, et al, would have gone all out to support them, to do whatever they could to either rescue their men, or destroy those who were attempting to kidnap them.
This was a blatant act of, at the minimum, piracy, conducted by a warship flying it’s national colours.
Yes, it’s easy to sit here and say “this is what I would do”… but in this case, were I one of those Sailors or Marines, I’d be asking why the bloody h@ll no one came to my defense.
You have to know that the rest of Ship’s Company is asking themselves whether or not THEY should consider risking their lives for the current officer in charge.
In my book, and that’s probably not worth a whole lot, it’s better to take offensive action to reclaim control over the situation, to respond quickly and violently to protect your own, rather than to hold fire and perhaps worry about whether the JAG would approve of your choice of responses.
Anyway, that’s my 2-cent’s worth. Other’s mileage may, of course, vary.
Respects,
All I can say, is that when things got sticky the Brits liked to have the option of snuggling up near one of our ships. We’ll pull the trigger in situations that they are not allowed to.
National ROEs vary country to country, and anyway, I believe I remember a similar situation shortly after OIF – eventually the Brits were repatriated unharmed. Escalating to the use of force might or might not have provided a lesson in deterrence for the future, but it’d have a better than even chances of ending up with some dead Brits to go with a large number of dead Iranians in the here and now.
That’s why he gets paid the CO bucks.
Was chatting with a friend on a separate channel and thought that while this was probably a case of low-level buffoonery, it might not be. We always tend to underestimate people, especially when it comes to the culture that invented chess.
This might have been a way for the Iranians to do a low-risk “temperature” check on coalition naval rules of engagement and overall readiness. If it went south they could quickly both 1) disclaim top-level responsibility, and 2) paint themselves as the victims to their own restless populace.
Just hard to tell.
AW1 Tim:
If this were a situation where shots had been fired, I will agree that the CO should respond with force. But from what few facts we know (ah – those pesky facts again), there was no shooting by the Iranians. So I think the CO made the right call. Better to defuse the situation, rather than escalate, discretion being the better part of valor, etc. I know that does not seem very warrior-like. But sometimes you have to ask questions first and shoot later, rather than the other way around.
And it was not the JAG I was thinking of, but the CINC, who would be asking me what I was doing starting a war with the Iranians, when we could have solved the issue with diplomacy like we did last time.
For the record, my gut instinct is to agree with your position. But then my ROE training takes over. Are the Iranians just saber rattling, or are they trying to draw me into a fire-fight as a pretext to start something wider?
My bottom line until I hear something more is the CO made the right call: His guys are unhurt, no shooting war with the Iranians on their terms.
His guys are unhurt, no shooting war with the Iranians
Dea Wolf – I assume you are all right with having the sailors filmed blind folded and tied together and then appologizing to the camera for world consumption?
As I said earlier, how many times are we going to go through this? Not too many more, I wouldn’t think.
Is this just me, or is it deja vu all over again with these fools? Seems they kinda did this once before in 1978, and it didn’t end up too well for them in the long run, kinda ended up on the wrong side of Reagan…me thinks they played their hand very badly. Maybe we catch Amhadinnerjacket when he comes to NY soon, and send him down to Gimo for a talk with da boys on the windward side for a bit…
I’m leaning towards Tim’s view of the matter. Not to say that the behavior of HMS Cornwall’s skipper falls under Article 12, and he deserves the same fate as Byng, but if it were up to me he’d be on the beach. If it turns out he was hamstrung by the ROE, then whomever promulgated the ROE would join him.
Was his ship within direct supporting range of the RIBs? If not, why wasn’t it? If his crew is being kidnapped why didn’t he at least illuminate the Iranian vessels with some fire control radars? The English may not be in a shooting war with Iran, but there were steps they could’ve taken.
Not to mention that back in the 80s they didn’t hesitate to shoot at the Argentines, for much the same provocation as today.
Let’s say Lex is right, and this is all a test to see what we’ll put up with. Looks like Iran can get away with pretty much anything short of shooting at us.
We know what JPJ’ intent was, too bad the Brits don’t feel the same way.
/BeachBum
Didn’t the CO say that the boarding party had air cover in the form of a helicopter? If I recall the snippet of news I overhead in passing, air cover is a matter of SOP for all boarding parties. If that is so, what kind of air cover did they have and how could ROE not allow for action to protect and/or retrieve the UK sailors?
And Mahmoud Ahmad’man canceled his visit to the UN claiming (if I heard the news report correctly) that the U.S. had placed unacceptable restrictions on his security entourage.
I also heard Duncan Hunter on the tube saying that we should act with our UK cousins if they take on a mission to retrieve the sailors. Then he mentioned something about centrifuges and mightswell in the same thought…
Interesting times.
All the tactical talk above. Good for after action reports/LL..
What is unfolding is strategic..on Irans part. Maskrikova? Who knows..who cares. We are (The Iraqis) still holding their IED factory reps, er..diplomats from that raid a couple months ago right?
They have grossly miscalculated. I still see opportunity.
b2
In essence a tactical gap exploited by the IRGCN
1)CORNWALL was not in range to tactically support the VBSS teams embarked (CO responsibility?).
2) Air cover was intermittent
3) Comms with VBSS teams embarked were broken.
Remains to be seen how this plays out as to whether tactical doctrine is affected.
Shipmates,
Here’s the other thing that bothers me. How could Cornwall not have seen the Iranian vessel(s) moving into position? Certainly she had to have been keeping a plot of all the traffic in the area. The Nav and Radar plot, an ESM plot, and had lookouts stationed.
Wasn’t anyone using the situational awareness doctrine? Could the Ship’s tactical crew have been so focused on the small boats and boarding party that they became unaware of the intruder’s approach and/or intent?
I’ll say again that I wasn’t there, and that I certainly don’t have access to all the data. But I am just overwhelmed that a warchip charged with monitoring, intercepting, and searching vessels in a specific area could have been so taken unawares and allowed this incident to take place.
Something isn’t right here. Something isn’t being talked about. And now we get word that the Pirate Government has moved the hostages to Tehran. Lovely. At least Carter isn’t in office to micro-manage a too-small rescue attempt and kill more of our shipmates. I’ll NEVER forgive him for that one.
Respects,
You know, Lex, this is the second time you’ve used this topic for a post. And just like before, every time I see the words “Not Ready to Play Nice”, that da** song gets stuck back in my head for the rest of the day.
Those guys weren’t near as nice when they had HMS Leopard visit and search USS Chesapeake. Would that they could be half that nasty, these days.