Iran’s Seizure of U.K. Sailors Heightens Risks

Judy Mathewson and Janine Zacharia

April 2 (Bloomberg) — After years of patrolling in close quarters in the Persian Gulf, the Iranian and U.S. navies have learned how to leave each other alone; the same isn’t true of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The Guard, which operates with a chain of command separate from Iran’s regular navy, sparked an international crisis by seizing 15 British sailors and marines on March 23. As the U.S. Navy stages its largest show of force in the Persian Gulf since 2003, the Guard’s unpredictable behavior in those waters increases the likelihood that another incident might inflame the already tense international standoff.

The Guard — the radical force that the U.S. says is supplying weapons to Shiite insurgents in Iraq, and that calls for exporting Iranian-style revolutions to other Muslim nations — is “interpreting their orders differently” than the regular Iranian Navy, said Kenneth Pollack, a Middle East senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Historically, Guard commanders and crews have been the “most obnoxious,” sailing directly at U.S. ships in high- stakes games of “chicken,” Pollack said.

The Revolutionary Guard commands fleets of small boats active in the Persian Gulf, from its northern reaches where the British sailors were seized to the Strait of Hormuz. That’s near where the Guard’s Swedish-built boats exchanged fire in 1988 with the U.S. guided-missile cruiser Vincennes the day it shot down an Iranian airliner, killing all 290 people onboard.

Rules of Engagement

The Revolutionary Guard may not follow standard procedures covering contact with U.S. and U.K. forces — so-called rules of engagement — that could help defuse potential conflicts.

“The rules of engagement of the regular Iranian navy appear to be very careful because we haven’t seen them engaged in an incident in quite some time. But the rules of engagement for the IRGC are clearly very aggressive,” said U.S. Representative Mark Kirk (news, bio, voting record), an Illinois Republican.

Kirk is also a U.S. Navy Reserve intelligence officer who has served in the Persian Gulf area. He is backing a measure in Congress calling for the United Nations Security Council to restrict gasoline imports to Iran. The UN last month passed a second resolution condemning Iran’s nuclear program and imposing sanctions.

Rules of engagement cover peacetime situations where militaries are allowed to use force, for example to defend against an unprovoked attack. In areas where there’s greater danger of a hostile act, U.S. rules are usually classified. “We don’t discuss rules of engagement, period,” said Navy Commander Kevin Aandahl, a spokesman for the U.S. Fifth Fleet.

British Rules

Britain’s first sea lord, Admiral Sir Alan West, said on March 25 that British rules of engagement are “very much de- escalatory because we don’t want wars starting,” the British newspaper The Independent reported.

U.S. forces may have more leeway because of a 1987 incident in which an Iraqi fighter jet launched two missiles at the USS Stark as the frigate patrolled Gulf waters. Iraq, at war with Iran at the time, said it was a case of mistaken identity.

As a result, U.S. Naval commanders were given more authority to protect themselves in the Gulf. “It was emphasized that they do not have to be shot at before responding and that they have an unambiguous responsibility to protect their units and people,” the Pentagon wrote in its formal report on the Vincennes incident.

The Independent reported March 26 that the second-in-command of a U.S. vessel in the Gulf said that in contrast to the Royal Navy, his sailors would have fired on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard if they’d been seized as the 15 British mariners were.

More Latitude

“I don’t want to second-guess the British after the fact, but our rules of engagement allow a little more latitude,” U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Erik Horner, executive officer of the guided-missile frigate USS Underwood, told the Independent. “The unique U.S. Navy rules of engagement say we not only have a right to self defense but also an obligation to self defense.”

The top U.S. military official in the region says the U.S. isn’t out to pick a fight. “We have no intention of perpetrating any kind of incidents,” Admiral William Fallon, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, said in a March 16 interview. “We are not interested in a conflict.”

Meanwhile, the seizure of the British sailors by the Revolutionary Guards may lead to the British also reconsidering their rules of engagement.

“My educated guess would be that the original rules of the Royal Navy were to fire at if fired upon,” Kirk said in an interview. “My guess is that now the new rules for the British may be that you may use force to prevent your seizure.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Judy Mathewson in Washington at jmathewson@bloomberg.net ; Janine Zacharia in Washington at jzacharia@bloomberg.net