Comment

Iran's game of dare on the high seas risks full-blown war with the West

Royal Navy Type 23 frigate HMS Montrose is pictured at speed in the Mediterranean Sea during Exercise Cougar 12 October 10, 2012. Picture taken October 10, 2012
One mistake, and its calculations will go overboard Credit: REUTERS

Iran's foolish gamble could spectacularly backfire

Gibraltar’s seizure of an Iranian oil tanker bound for Syria has sent tensions between London and Tehran soaring. Harrying BP tankers in the Gulf is only a part of Iran's riposte. The Iranians see Britain as America’s closest ally but also as its link to the EU. The current imbroglios from Brexit to the Darroch Affair encourage the Islamic Republic to see the UK as a soft target. Donald Trump’s Twitter-spat with Theresa May looks to Iran like a trans-Atlantic split.

Debates in the West about the wisdom of US sanctions and withdrawal from the nuclear deal have also encouraged Iran the probe for splits in the West. Already Spain’s foreign minister – and the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs in-waiting – Jose Borrell has queried the legality of Gibraltar’s detention of the Iranian tanker. The usually-hawkish ex-Swedish premier, Carl Bildt, from the Euro-right has joined in the chorus charging Britain with kow-towing to US sanctions on Iran which Brussels does not recognise.

This provokes a nagging doubt about Western solidarity. But remember the dispute between Washington and the Europeans has been about how best to contain Iran, through sanctions or the nuclear deal.

Nobody in Europe backs Iran. Maybe cooler heads in Tehran understand that, but the hardliners with the support of hotheads in branches of the military might misread the situation. The Revolutionary Guards’ tactics of swarming vessels in the Gulf is risky but a good intelligence manoeuvre. They were testing how many torpedo boats could be targeted by a ship like HMS Montrose at any one time.

Let’s hope it was a sobering lesson. This game of dare on the high seas plays well at home and the Ayatollahs need the support of a patriotic surge in the absence of any tangible economic benefits to their people. But President Rouhani’s taunts that Britain is “too scared” to confront Iran could backfire dangerously. It is one thing for Tehran to judge – correctly – that America and Britain regard invading Iran as a hiding to nothing.

But if the Islamic Republic thinks that the West’s two chief military powers will let it set the terms of traffic through the Gulf, then it will find out that it isn’t really in charge of escalating and winding back tensions. As with its upping the level of uranium enrichment, Iran needs to explain the reasons why it is making a tense situation worse.

Feeding Western suspicions that going nuclear in the military sense was always their long-term goal seems an odd way to win friends and influence people – unless the real power-brokers in Iran are playing for the highest stakes.

What if Iran’s politico-military elite has decided that the Americans and their allies won’t react decisively if they boost their backing for the Houthis on the Red Sea side of Arabia? If the approaches to the Suez Canal are brought into this dangerous game as well as the Straits of Hormuz, then not only oil traffic but global commerce on a grand scale could be at risk. Maybe the Revolutionary Guards stationed in Syria have their eyes on our sovereign bases in Cyprus as potential targets too.

Admirers of Persian culture often emphasise how Iran thinks in long periods - unlike Americans with their attention-deficit disorder. But a wise Iran would have been emollient in the face of President Trump’s renewed sanctions. It would have presented itself in all its injured innocence to the rest of the world. What Tehran’s rulers seem to have decided is not only to push back, but to strike out in ways which risk war but fall just short of shooting.

One mistake, a swarming which is judged the prelude to an attack, and those calculations go overboard. If Iran provokes a real crisis it will be the moment of decision for our allies who’ll have to make a choice. Does anyone really doubt which side the Europeans will come down on? Let’s hope Iran judges it aright too. 

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