Iran’s intentions were signposted in a speech before the Gulf 15 were seized, says philip jacobson |
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Two days before the 15 British sailors and marines were taken hostage in the Persian Gulf, Iran's Supreme Leader warned publicly that the Islamic regime intended to retaliate in kind for "illegal measures" he claimed had been taken against Iran by the international community.
In a tub-thumping speech to mark the Iranian New Year, Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei (right) electrified a crowd in Mashad with a defiant declaration that "we can also act against the law and we will do so".
Some experts on Iran interpreted this as proof that Khamenei had already given the nod for a strike against the West in response to the international community's opposition to the controversial Iranian nuclear programme.
Others believed the abduction last December of several suspected spies belonging to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps at their base in Irbil, northern Iraq, |
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| There’s little doubt that Khamenei’s words presaged tit-for-tat kidnappings |
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was a more likely catalyst for Iran's revenge. Most agreed the threat was imminent.
Britain's renowned intelligence listening post, the Cheltenham-based GCHQ, must have monitored Khamenei's address for any indications of major shifts in Iranian strategy.
At this point, there can be no way of knowing what conclusions analysts may have drawn from his belligerent remarks.
But in the view of Dr Ali Ansari, an Edinburgh-based academic who specialises in Iranian studies, there was little doubt that Khamenei's words presaged tit-for-tat kidnappings to put some human bargaining chips in the bag. Significantly, the country's firebrand president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a key ally of the Ayatollah, is suspected of having been among the student radicals who stormed the US embassy in Teheran in 1979, precipitating a 444-day hostage crisis.
The question is, was Whitehall alerted to a possible threat to British forces? And if so, why were the party from HMS Cornwall not on the highest state of alert? 
FIRST POSTED APRIL 4, 2007
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