Iran isn’t doing itself any favours this week

By Luke Bozier / @Luke_cb

Perhaps it’s to the credit of Western powers that there hasn’t been an aerial bombing of Iran just yet, or perhaps countries like the United States and the UK aren’t even in a position to stretch the theatre of war to a third front, what with two ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The diplomatic process to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions has been simmering away for what seems like an eternity already; I remember as far back as 2004/2005 and perhaps even earlier, warnings of “imminent war” following failures in negotiations. But alas, we are still very much in the diplomacy phase, and thus far even the most hawkish governments in Washington and Jerusalem have been restrained in their approach.

Is all this about to change? Iran this week ratcheted up tensions a notch by announcing plans to defy the international community and build ten new uranium enrichment sites. And to make matters worse, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard last week captured a group of young Brits sailing just inside an area of water which is disputed between Iran and the tiny Gulf state of Bahrain. In the Spring of 2007, Iran famously captured a group of British navy soldiers and held them captive for a time, embarrassing the British Government by dragging on the saga and refusing to release the group until they had gained as much public relations value from them as they could.

According to reports coming from the office of the Iranian President, Iran has promised measures that are “hard and serious”, if the group are found to have had “evil intentions”. How one quantifies and proves evil intentions in this respect, I don’t know, but it’s clear that the Iranian Government is willing to make big a deal of this seemingly innocent and accidental stray into their territorial water.

This surely sends the wrong message to diplomats in London, Washington and Beijing, at an important time in the long-running diplomatic negotiations. Along with the announcements regarding the new uranium processing plants, the international community would be right to withhold trust in the Iranian regime.

Later today, President Obama is to announce that a further 34,000 American troops will be sent to Afghanistan. The whole world seems to be focussed intently on how to get out of the quagmire that Afghanistan could become. Iraq has swapped places with Afghanistan to become the “forgotten front”, although the situation there has stabilised somewhat over the last year. The Middle East peace project is painfully slow in making progress. With all of these issues on the President’s desk, perhaps it would be easy to forget the huge white elephant in the region, which on the surface, at least, has nuclear ambitions.

This week, Tehran sent the world a wake up call.