Tony Blair said Britain had managed to secure the release of the Iran hostages without any deal, negotiation or side agreement. So what exactly did we do?
By James Cusick, Westminster Editor
TEAM of British negotiators on standby and ready to fly out to Iran; daily updates from the British embassy in Tehran; the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, contacted and asked to help; similar regular contact with the Saudis and the Turks; the USS Nimitz heading to the Gulf to boost US naval power in the region; the Foreign Office in almost daily consultation with Condoleezza Rice and US State Department officials; an Iranian diplomat abducted in Baghdad in February sent home with the help of the Iraqi government the day before the 15 sailors were released.
Tony Blair's stark description of Britain's strategy to ensure the release of the British military personnel held in Iran as "not negotiating but not confronting" omits an almost frantic array of diplomatic activity that had one unifying theme: we had no firm idea of how or when they would be coming home.
Standing in Downing Street last Wednesday alongside the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, the prime minister said Britain had taken a "measured approach". He said the release of the personnel had happened quicker than many people anticipated. In the diplomatic code of the Foreign Office, that correctly translates as "quicker than any of us believed - even in our dreams".
The reality of Blair's dual-track strategy - insisting that Britain had been open to talks with Iran, while trying to mobilise international support - is that Iran, for most of the time the personnel were held, was a diplomatic black hole where a lack of open and reliable diplomatic channels meant Britain was forced to explore any and all the options available. And when eventually last Tuesday, the day before the release, the prospect of negotiations presented itself, a team was put together consisting of experienced navy officials, senior officials from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and lawyers who advise the government on international law.
Plans for the team to fly out to Tehran were said to be advanced. The word "negotiate" was not to be used to describe their objective. They were to explore ways of bringing the 15 home, of assuring Iran that their territory was not, and would not be in the future, threatened by Britain.
When Tony Blair said last Tuesday that "the next 48 hours will be fairly critical", it was a nod to the negotiations that weren't to be described as negotiations. But although the prime minister added that if things didn't quite work out Britain would take "an increasingly tougher position", just what the tougher position would be was unclear. Despite repeated calls from Britain's ambassador in Iran, Geoffrey Adams, who is said to have met daily with Iranian officials in Tehran throughout the crisis, and with Lord Triesman, the Foreign Office minister, also talking daily to the Iranian ambassador in London, Rasoul Movahedian, at the beginning of last week there had been no access to the hostages and no formal response to the diplomatic notes sent to Tehran at the end of the previous week. It was what one diplomat called "a frustrating radio silence that was difficult to interpret".
The decision to "internationalise" the crisis was, according to Foreign Office sources, almost automatic. But it had failed. Britain wanted the Security Council to demand that Iran release the 15 personnel. The UN merely expressed "grave concern". Days after Britain's weak position within the UN was exposed, Beckett was with European Union ministers in Bremen. They obliged where the Security Council had failed: the EU demanded the "immediate and unconditional" release of the prisoners.
The high-profile UN and EU routes appeared to have a negative effect. Gholamreza Ansari, Iran's ambassador in Moscow, offered the bad news that legal proceedings against the 15 had already started and that they could face charges and a trial. We now know from the sailors' descriptions of their captivity that similar descriptions of charges and up to seven years in jail were being threatened.
Did the Foreign Office know if Ansari was a believable messenger? They didn't. Although contacts with Iran exist, they are limited.
In 2001 Mo Mowlam became the first British Cabinet minister to visit Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Jack Straw, the new foreign secretary after the 2001 general election, followed in September that year. The Commons foreign affairs committee visited in 2003 to discuss human rights and security issues. Iran's then foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, visited London in February 2003. Prince Charles visited Tehran in 2004 in his capacity as patron of the British Red Cross.
Margaret Beckett's knowledge of Iranian affairs is limited, and given the lack of useful information coming out of Tehran, she looked out of her depth in interpreting what were positive and what were negative diplomatic signs.
In her first weeks at the Foreign Office, she admits she told her new civil servants: "Assume I don't know anything, I won't be offended." Despite Beckett saying she was willing to "engage in dialogue and discussions with Iran", there was dialogue and there were discussions; but experienced officials knew they might not be speaking to the right people.
In Iran, overall authority lies with the supreme leader, currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is chosen by the Assembly of Experts, an elected body of 96 religious Islamic scholars. The supreme leader is also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The executive is headed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former mayor of Tehran.
It was the Iranian Republican Guard who seized the 15 British personnel in the Shatt-al-Arab waterway between Iraq and Iran. The guard are loyal to the supreme leader, not Ahmadinejad. There was also the added complication of the crisis taking place during an official government holiday period. So was the diplomatic "radio silence" a positive or negative sign? Beckett couldn't say. All she could say, even a day before the captives were released, was that a swift resolution "was not in sight".
But there was, at the beginning of last week, substantial behind-the-scenes movement. And not all of it was being directed by the Foreign Office. Sir Nigel Sheinwald, Blair's chief foreign policy adviser, had for days been talking to the Syrians. Five months ago, Sheinwald visited Damascus to try to persuade President Assad to use his influence to restrict the way Iran was influencing events inside Iraq. There was an Arab summit in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia the week before last. Sheinwald had asked Syria to speak to the Iranian foreign minister, Manuchehr Mottaki.
In effect, while Beckett was still exploring the international route, Sheinwald was already well down the bilateral route. And it was the bilateral route that was delivering positives. Although Beckett was saying there was no prospect of release on the horizon, the head of the Iranian parliament's committee on foreign policy, Allaeddin Broujerdi, was already praising the bilateral route "to prevent such an event taking place in the future".
The defence secretary, Des Browne, also confirmed at the beginning of last week that "direct bilateral communication with the Iranians" had taken place over the weekend. But although Browne sounded far more optimistic than Beckett, there was still nothing concrete. There had clearly been a change of focus in the way Britain was conducting its "negotiations" with Iran, but there was still concern about who precisely was calling the shots and what further gestures needed to be made.
But according to Trita Parsi, president of the US Iranian-American Council, the bilateral focus - which Iran regards as dealing with them respectfully, rather than with a resort to force or sanctions implied through the UN route - was delivering. And there was an additional incentive. "I think the Iranians thought it better to declare victory and put an end to the crisis before there was further escalation," said Parsi.
Last Monday was the tipping point: Iran got something they were looking for, and there now lay ahead an obvious event in which they could parade their "victory".
Despite Tony Blair saying there was no deal or side agreement, an Iranian diplomat who had been captured in a Shi'ite-controlled area of Baghdad two months ago was unexpectedly released last Monday and travelled to Tehran on Tuesday, the day before the Iranian president held a press conference and announced the release of the 15 sailors and marines.
The diplomat, Jalal Sharafi, was a second secretary at the Iranian embassy. His capture in Baghdad came two months after the US military had arrested five Iranians in northern Iraq. One of those taken was said to be a senior officer in the Quds force, an elite unit which is part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The US claims the five were involved in providing funds, weapons and training to Shi'ite militia in Iraq.
So was this a "side agreement", in effect a prisoner swap? The Iraqi government admits it had exerted pressure on the group who were holding Sharafi. Other reports point to Iraqi intelligence holding the Iranian diplomat, and that it was pressure from the US State Department that secured the release of Sharafi and that the release of the five other Iranians will follow shortly.
But according to the British and Iraqi version of these events, there had been no prisoner swap, no deal and no allied negotiations. If there had been Iraqi assistance, it was to improve the diplomatic climate that encouraged Iran to see that the bilateral way forward would also bring other dividends.
The private bilateral discussions that were described by Des Browne delivered their public success on Monday last week when the general secretary of Iran's National Security Council, Dr Ali Larijani, broadcast his advice that there would be no need for a trial of the 15 hostages. "This issue should be resolved bilaterally our priority is to resolve the issue through diplomatic channels. We are not interested in having this issue get further complicated."
Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, and close to the supreme leader and thus the Revolutionary Guard, would have known about the release or likely release of Sharafi when he spoke on Channel Four News last Monday night.
Number 10 would have known about events in Baghdad influencing Larijani's ability to sound conciliatory and hardline at the same time. "We are not living in the stone age," he told Channel Four. He mentioned GPS technology to "pinpoint the presence" of the 15 being held.
Having talked over the weekend, the Foreign Office gave Larijani what he needed, the message that Britain might be open to discussions about preventing future maritime disputes. However, the Foreign Office, now engaged in putting together a "negotiating team" that might travel to Tehran, remained clear there could be no preconditions for the release of the military personnel. "Our priority is to get them out," they said.
Though neither Blair, Beckett nor Sheinwald knew precisely how or when the release of the 15 prisoners would happen, they knew the complete tone of the Iranians had changed. The crisis was about to end.
There had been deals, but deals that could be denied. There had been negotiations, but nothing too formal. Pressure and assurances had been from a position of weakness rather than strength.
And there had also been a lack of diplomatic clarity that gave the impression that Britain was in a subordinate role, dependent on guessing how to give the Iranians what they wanted.
Juan Cole, a foreign affairs academic at the University of Michigan, said the diplomatic balance shifted in Iran's favour, but it had to. "When the bilateral talks began, Iran were admitted as equals, not scolded as children. That created the opening for Khameini and Ahmadinejad to climb down and save face."
Mark Fitzpatrick, of the Institute of Strategic Studies in London, believes Britain had little opportunity other than to play it by the book. But the mixed messages, the alternative diplomatic strategies, a foreign secretary who looked bemused by unfolding events and a prime minister still unable to shake off the fallout from the Iraq war in the final weeks of his premiership, leave the question: which book were they playing it by?
