2007 Iranian arrest of Royal Navy personnel


On 23 March 2007, fifteen Royal Navy personnel from were searching a merchant vessel when they were surrounded by the Navy of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and detained off the Iran–Iraq coast. In the course of events, British forces claimed that the vessel was in Iraqi waters, but the Iranians insisted that they were in Iran's territorial waters. The fifteen personnel were released thirteen days later on 4 April 2007.
A year later, a British investigation report was released which stated that the area in which the incident took place was not covered by any formal agreement between Iran and Iraq.

Background

On 23 March 2007, a team of eight sailors and seven Royal Marines in two rigid-hulled inflatable boats from the Type 22 frigate had been searching a merchant dhow for smuggled automobiles when they were detained at approximately 10:30 Arabia Standard Time or 11:00 Iran Standard Time by the crews of two Iranian boats; a further six Iranian boats then assisted in the seizure. The British personnel were taken to an Iranian Revolutionary Guards base in Tehran for questioning. Iranian officials claimed that the British sailors were in Iranian waters. A University of Durham analysis of the initial Iranian identification of the location of the boats showed that the position given was in Iraqi waters. According to the British Ministry of Defence, the Iranians issued a "corrected" location, which placed the boats in Iranian waters.
Information provided by Britain initially consistently placed the boats in Iraqi waters. However, the subsequent report by the House of Commons' Foreign Affairs Select Committee confirmed that the Ministry of Defence map presented to the worldwide media was "inaccurate" as it presented a boundary line when no maritime boundary between the two countries had been agreed upon, and so "The Government was fortunate that it was not in Iran's interests to contest the accuracy of the map." The Foreign Affairs Committee also criticised the government for failing to contact a key Iranian negotiator in a timely manner. Reports in April 2008, citing documents from the MoD inquiry into the incident, stated that the British sailors captured by Iran were in disputed waters, that the US-led coalition had drawn a boundary line between Iran and Iraq without informing the Iranians, and that Iranian coastal protection vessels regularly crossed this coalition-defined boundary.
The British government stated that the team had been conducting a compliance inspection of a merchant ship under the mandate of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1723. While moving along the Shatt al-Arab waterway, the merchantman had aroused the suspicion of a Royal Navy helicopter. Cornwall was part of the British contribution to multinational forces engaged in the Iraq War.
Intense diplomatic efforts were made to secure the release of the detainees. On 28 March 2007 television channels around the world showed footage released by the Iranian government of some of the fifteen British sailors. This included a statement by captured Royal Navy sailor Faye Turney, along with a letter she wrote under compulsion, which apologised for British intrusions into Iranian waters. Over the next two days a further video was shown on Iranian television displaying three of the detained Britons; and two further letters attributed to Faye Turney were released, again claiming the British boats were in Iranian waters. Iran stated that an apology from British officials would "facilitate" the release of the personnel.

British personnel involved

The fifteen Royal Navy and Royal Marines personnel detained were:
On 4 April, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held a news conference to announce the release of the personnel as "a gift" to Britain. When returned to the UK the group claimed to have been put under "constant psychological pressure" from the Iranian authorities. In addition, British equipment, including secure voice communication kit and navigational hardware, has not been reported as being returned.
The Ministry of Defence announced on 7 April 2007 the beginning of a "detailed inquiry" into the circumstances leading to the capture of fifteen personnel by Iran. The confidential inquiry was headed by Lieutenant General Sir Robert Fulton, the Governor of Gibraltar. On 22 July 2007, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee released a report into the incident, although Fulton's report had not been released to the parliamentary committee.

Legal treaties in force at site

The Algiers Agreement, ratified by both nations in 1976, remains in force. It defined the Iran-Iraq international boundary in the Shatt al-Arab by a series of precisely defined turning points closely approximating the 1975 thalweg or deepest channel, ending at point "R". Point "R", at is about southeast of the tip of Iraq's Al-Faw peninsula at high tide. Point "R" is where the thalweg in 1975 was adjacent to the furthest point of exposed mud flats at "astronomical lowest low tide". Point "R" thus constitutes the end of the land boundary of the two nations, despite being under water at all but the lowest tides.
According to analysis by the International Boundary Research Unit at the UK's Durham University, the location provided by the Ministry of Defence for the location of the seizure is southwest of this Point "R" boundary terminus and south of this international boundary line. The university stated: "The point lies on the Iraqi side of...the agreed land boundary." This was challenged by Iran, whose second set of released co-ordinates were inside its waters. The location provided by the British government was not in disputed territory according to IBRU, which said the boundary was disputed only beyond Point "R". Confirming this, Richard Schofield, an expert in international boundaries at King's College London, stated "Iran and Iraq have never agreed to a boundary of their territorial waters. There is no legal definition of the boundary beyond the Shatt al-Arab."
The Algiers Agreement came into effect after being signed by both states in 1975 and ratified by both states in 1976. Under international law, one state cannot unilaterally reject a previously ratified treaty, and the treaty had no clause providing for abrogation by one state only. A joint commission should conduct a survey of the Shatt al Arab at least every ten years. No such survey appears to have taken place, so there could be a dispute as to whether the boundary followed the line defined in 1975 or the current thalweg of the river. The IBRU contended that "it would need a dramatic reconfiguration of the coastline marked on current charts for the median line to run to the west of the point" at which MoD had stated the incident occurred, and so be in Iranian waters.
A year after the incident a British MoD investigation report was released which stated that the area in which the incident took place was not covered by any internationally agreed delineation. US forces had defined an operational boundary, but that had not been communicated to Iran, and Iranian forces crossed this operational boundary an average of 12 times per month. Since the 1975 Algiers Agreement the Shatt al-Arab channel had shifted in favour of Iran, and any Iranian notional boundary was not known to the US coalition. While innocent passage is permitted in each other's waters, boarding and compliance inspections in another state's waters would not be lawful.

Operational environment

Cornwall was a Batch 3 Type 22 frigate, lead ship of the Cornwall class. It constituted part of the British contribution to Combined Task Force 158 which controlled maritime security operations in the Northern Persian Gulf and included Royal Navy, United States Navy, United States Coast Guard, Royal Australian Navy and Iraqi Navy forces. The task force was under the command of Commodore Nick Lambert, embarked in Cornwall with a staff from Commander United Kingdom Maritime Forces.
In a joint Five News and Sky News interview, recorded on 13 March but not broadcast until after the captured service personnel had been released, Captain Chris Air acknowledged that he was operating close to the buffer zone between Iranian and Iraqi waters, saying: "It's good to gather intelligence on the Iranians" and that one purpose of patrols in the area was to gather intelligence on "any sort of Iranian activity".
On 23 March 2007 two boats from Cornwall with the boarding team, fourteen men and one woman, conducted an unopposed boarding and compliance inspection of a merchant vessel suspected of smuggling automobiles. Following the inspection and after disembarking from the merchantman the team was detained by Iranian forces in six boats at around 10:30 Arabia Standard Time or 11:00 Iran Standard Time, and escorted to an Iranian naval facility in the Shatt-al-Arab waterway.
Journalists on Cornwall reported that the British forces had chased and boarded a barge that had offloaded vehicles from the merchant ship. The merchant ship and barges, which had been observed the previous day when a barge was boarded, were suspected of smuggling.
According to Britain, Cornwall could not get closer to the merchant vessel because of shallow water. A Lynx helicopter monitoring the boarding had resumed its reconnaissance of the area, and by the time Cornwall realised what was happening the British team was already being escorted to shore by the Iranian border patrol.
Media reporting indicates that warnings of an increased risk of action by Iran, in response to the detention of Iranian officials in Iraq, had been communicated to the UK by the US Central Intelligence Agency but had not resulted in an increase in the area threat levels.