US Offered Military Assistance To UK During Hostage Crisis
CAPTAIN ED
The Guardian reports that the Bush administration offered a series of military options to the Blair government at the beginning of the hostage crisis, but the British asked the Americans to hold off on any response. The exact list remains classified, but it included one option of "aggressive patrols" over Revolutionary Guard locations:
"The US offered to take military action on behalf of the 15 British sailors and marines held by Iran, including buzzing Iranian Revolutionary Guard positions with warplanes, the Guardian has learned.
In the first few days after the captives were seized and British diplomats were getting no news from Tehran on their whereabouts, Pentagon officials asked their British counterparts: what do you want us to do? They offered a series of military options, a list which remains top secret given the mounting risk of war between the US and Iran. But one of the options was for US combat aircraft to mount aggressive patrols over Iranian Revolutionary Guard bases in Iran, to underline the seriousness of the situation.
The British declined the offer and said the US could calm the situation by staying out of it. London also asked the US to tone down military exercises that were already under way in the Gulf. Three days before the capture of the 15 Britons , a second carrier group arrived having been ordered there by president George Bush in January. The aim was to add to pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme and alleged operations inside Iraq against coalition forces.
At the request of the British, the two US carrier groups, totalling 40 ships plus aircraft, modified their exercises to make them less confrontational."
It explains the muted response from the Bush administration during the crisis. Except for demanding the release of the 15 sailors and Marines and endorsing a strong response from the UN, the US stayed rather quiet during the fortnight. The Navy moved a second carrier group into the Gulf, but those orders had come in January and they were expected to arrive at that time.
The report also explains why the Revolutionary Guard captured British personnel rather than Americans. The Guardian's source within the RG admitted that detaining Americans would have led to war, and the RG apparently wanted to push the line to somewhere short of that. It bolsters the case that the capture was ordered locally by an RG commander acting more or less unilaterally, who put the nation in a crisis its senior leadership hadn't sought, but who intended to make the best use of it once it occurred.
International pressure, including a note from the Vatican, seems to have played a part in Iran's release of the sailors, although the subsequent release of an Iranian agent captured in Iraq may have been a part of a wider deal. The Iraqi government also won consular access to the five Iranian agents captured in Irbil in January, which could signal their release sometime soon. If so, it will be hard to conclude anything other than the hostaging of the British sailors was a successful strategy by Revolutionary Guard commanders to get their own people released from American custody.
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