Decades of being soft on Iran has only emboldened the ayatollahs Daniel Hannan
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/07/28/decades-soft-iran-has-emboldened-ayatollahs/
Seizing another state’s vessel on the high seas is an aggressive act – arguably an act of war. Britain’s interception of American shipping in pursuit of its blockade against Napoleon, for example, led to the War of 1812, the burning of the White House and the Battle of New Orleans. So when Iran boarded a British-flagged tanker in the Straits of Hormuz this week, it was, at the very least, trampling on international norms and flouting maritime law.
The attack was evidently intended as retaliation for the detention of an Iranian vessel in Gibraltar – with the critical difference that the earlier seizure was carried out in Gibraltarian waters, was authorised by local law, and was ordered in pursuit of internationally recognised sanctions against Syria.
Then again, the ayatollahs can hardly be blamed for trying their hand. From the moment they seized power in 1979, they have shown utter contempt for the accepted rules of national sovereignty, yet have paid little price.
What was the overture with which the Iranian Revolution announced itself in 1979? That’s right: the use of US diplomats as hostages. Think, for a moment, about quite how shocking it is to violate the sanctity of a diplomatic compound. When, to pluck an almost random example, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, staff at the British legation in Buenos Aires knew that they had nothing to fear. Even during the Second World War, when mutually hostile ideologies sought to extirpate each other, embassy personnel were peacefully evacuated through neutral states. Safe passage for ambassadors has been the basis of relations among states since the earliest civilizations. By disregarding that ancient taboo, the mullahs were signalling that they did not play by the same rules as the rest of us. They would not recognise the concepts of territorial jurisdiction and international law that bound other countries. They answered, in their own eyes, to a higher power.
They got away with it, too. In 1980, even as the American staff were still being held hostage in Tehran, there was a mirror attack on the Iranian compound in London, carried out by an anti-revolutionary group. What happened? Britain sent in the SAS, rescued the hostages and handed the building back to Iran with a cheque to cover the damages incurred during the break-in. Not surprisingly, the ayatollahs concluded that they could have it both ways, receiving the courtesies accorded to a sovereign state without needing to reciprocate.
So began decades of Iranian-backed attacks on the international order. The regime sponsored militias and terrorist groups in Lebanon, in the Balkans, in the former Soviet states along the old Silk Road. They struck as far afield as London and Buenos Aires. They openly began a rocket programme, boasting of what they were doing.
It is often pointed out that escalation has a cost – and, after the fiasco of the Iraq war, we are all hyper-sensitive to that cost. But non-escalation can have a cost, too. Remember that Iran is behaving this way at a time when Britain and other European states have loosened their economic sanctions as part of the anti-nuclear accord struck in 2015. Unilateral de-escalation can be a dangerous – we might almost say provocative – thing.
It is in the nature of certain regimes to be hostile. The Iranian Revolution, like the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution, was an attack on the existing world order. Like them, it spilled out immediately from behind its borders, seeking to replicate itself around the globe. Like them, its legitimacy derived from violence, making violence its natural currency.
Such regimes are intrinsically destabilising. To borrow an image from chaos theory, they drink order from their surroundings. Or, in Leninist terms, they export their internal contradictions. In the end, they cannot be dealt with through normal diplomatic methods: they need to be confronted and beaten. No, I don’t like it either. But some truths have to be faced.
Comments are closed.
