Leaked cables show UK diplomats were reluctant to give pontiff credit for release of 15 sailors held for a fortnight in 2007
Heather Brooke
guardian.co.uk, Friday 10 December 2010 21.30 GMT
The pope intervened to help gain the release of 15 British sailors captured by Iran three years ago, according to a confidential briefing prepared for President Obama.
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| WikiLeaks cables reveal the pope's hand in the release of the 15 British navy personnel from Iranian captivity in 2007. They were released as a gift to mark Easter. Photograph: Str/AP |
The Vatican palace is allowed to send and receive ambassadors as though it were a real country, and seeks to claim membership of a number of international bodies. The US dispatch explains that the Vatican also claims "an ability to act as an intermediary" in international crises involving Iran.
Noyes adds circumspectly that: "It is unclear how much clout the Vatican really has with Iran." Nevertheless she tells Obama in plain terms that: "The Vatican helped secure the release of British sailors detained in Iranian waters in April 2007."
British diplomats in London are privately disinclined to give the pope as much credit as is being claimed. They say he did issue a message but was not necessarily key to the release.
The cables reveal several rival contenders for British gratitude. Diplomatic pressure is charted from many directions, which eventually got the sailors out.
A Dubai businessman saw the seizure as a deliberate attempt to push the west into greater conflict. He also believed the Iranians sought out British sailors, as a less risky stand-in for Americans, fearing a harsher reaction from the US.
US diplomats commented: "The idea that hardliners in Iran are seeking greater tensions to silence critics, unite the population, and divert attention away from economic and civil society concerns has been reported … by other contacts.
"It certainly appears Iran is using its seizure of the British sailors to prove its 'toughness', after facing repeated 'humiliations' on the international political front."
A Bruneian official said the Iranians could have been reacting to UN sanctions. He "believed that it may have been done for domestic reasons , in order to help President Ahmadinejad divert Iranian attention away from the bad news".
Iraq lobbied the Iranians immediately after the seizure in disputed Iran-Iraq waters, and the Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari said they made two or three approaches, without success. The president, Jalal Talabani, also wrote in vain to Iran.
The Foreign Office minister Kim Howells next asked the Australians to intervene. Their foreign secretary Alexander Downer, phoned Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki on 29 March, six days after the seizure, saying the detainees were "ordinary sailors, not spies". He told Mottaki: "It was essential for Iran to resolve this issue before it blew up to a dangerous level."
Mottaki demanded the UK first admit its sailors had deliberately crossed into Iranian waters. The Australian warned: ''The revolutionary guards and others were calling the shots."
As the crisis wore on the crown prince of nearby Bahrain "wondered aloud how the 15 British allowed themselves to be caught and why the British decided against immediate action … He quipped that sometimes there is a need for quick, strong escalation (to send a message)."
But key help was apparently given by Britain's friends in Oman. The British ambassador, Noel Guckian, "expressed great satisfaction" that Oman's foreign minister had called Iran frequently urging the sailors' release, which came in April.
The UK ambassador wrote: "The Omanis had been very supportive throughout the crisis and [Guckian] even credited them in some part for the successful outcome." It was an occasion, he concluded, when Oman's "positive but non-substantive" relationship with Tehran actually proved useful.
An Omani general said they had a "special relationship" with Iran. "The Omanis had engaged in low-key discussions with the Iranians to urge them to take a conciliatory approach to the problem. The Iranians had permitted Oman's ambassador to visit the captive British personnel."
One reformist member of the Iranian majlis [parliament] later told US diplomats in Dubai that the whole crisis was "simply a political stunt". "Citing a widely repeated rumour that the UK has influence over the clerical government ("everybody knows the mullahs usually obey England"), the MP doubted that the sailor crisis would … have escalated."
