U.S.: British were searching ship for car smuggling when seized The Associated Press Published: March 27, 2007
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: U.S. officials said Tuesday that British sailors had boarded an Indian-flagged commercial ship suspected of carrying smuggled cars when they were seized last week by Iranian naval forces in the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway.
It was the first detailed account of the operation being conducted by the 15 British sailors and marines when they were seized Friday by Iran, setting off a standoff between Britain and Iran.
"It was an Indian-flagged vessel. It was suspected of being involved in autmobile smuggling (into Iraq)," said Cmdr. Kevin Aandahl, a spokesman for the U.S. Fifth Fleet, speaking in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from fleet headquarters in Manama, Bahrain.
"It matched a profile of something we had told to be on the lookout for. It turned out to be not what we suspected and it was let go," he said.
posted
Thanks again Glass... and no, I'm not an analyst.
Interesting though, I saw one or two articles that claimed the merchant ship was actually seen unloading vehicles onto a barge that "sped away" as the British sailors approached.
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Tehran said yesterday that 15 British sailors taken hostage had confessed to straying into Iranian waters.
Terri Judd, the only newspaper journalist on HMS 'Cornwall', reports
Published: 25 March 2007
The white Toyota Corollas on the ship gleamed in the bright sunshine as the Royal Marines sped across the Persian Gulf in their fast inflatable boats.
The two navy crews had spotted the merchant vessel on the horizon as it brazenly offloaded its cargo of vehicles on to an old barge which would most likely slip up the Shatt al Arab waterway to the Iraqi city of Basra as part of the booming smuggling racket.
As they drew up alongside to investigate further, the barge turned tail and set off towards Iranian waters with the Marines and sailors in pursuit.
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posted
In fact... now that I read it again, the reporter claims the barge set sail towards Iranian waters... Hmmmm... Maybe it played out like this...
1)British spot cars being unloading off barge in Iraqi waters
2)Barge sees British approaching and heads towards Iranian waters, thinking it is safe there
3)British give chase, hoping to catch the barge before crossing the "border"
4)Barge calls for help or Iranians spot incident being played out
5)Iranians catch British across the border, barge gets away.
6)British soldiers are captured in "Iranian waters".
What do you think? Maybe I should be an Analyst....
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posted
re-read: the barge was trying to take the Brits that had boarded it into Iran and the Brits stopped them at gunpoint... the next day the Brits went back to the SHIP ... their mistake? allowing air support to leave the area above the SHIP.. thats when the Iranians moved in and captured them as they left the SHIP (not the barge)
Above them Lieutenant Commander Phil Richardson and his crew were providing cover in a Lynx Mk 8 helicopter as they once again spotted the same ship offloading as many as 50 cars on to three barges. This time the larger vessel was compliant as the British crew mounted ladders. Confident the ship was being co-operative and that there was no other sign of trouble from across the border, the helicopter disappeared to continue its reconnaissance of the area.
But minutes later, half a dozen large Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy fast-attack speedboats mounted with machine guns suddenly appeared and ambushed the British sailors as they returned to their two small rhibs. Soon as many as 15 to 20 boats encircled the trapped team.
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posted
Yeah I see that now along with this paragraph... LOL I got too excited and jumped the gun.
The kidnapping stemmed from Thursday's events, when the barge tried to evade the sailors who decided to take a more forceful approach. They leapt on to the craft as it sped towards the buffer zone that separates Iraq and Iran's territorial waters. As the Royal Navy crew jumped aboard, the car traders tried to hide a box before tossing it over the side. The Marines half raised their SA80 rifles and ordered the barge to turn back. Ominously, they could see an Iranian Revolutionary Guard boat circling nearby.
The suspected smugglers complied with the British orders and the crew returned to its rigid hull inflatable boats (rhibs) to continue its patrol, only to turn around and see the traders laughing in its direction.
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posted
I'm sure the only reason they don't force her to wear a full veil is so the world can see her face and confirm she is indeed captured.... Otherwise they would probably stone her for not covering it up....
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posted
Main reason I don't buy the British in Iranian waters argument.
Folks are saying the border map the British show is inaccurate. Well, maybe...but the IRANIAN GOVERNMENT has NOT.
They instead gave a different set of coordinates of where the ship was supposedly taken that puts the ship in Iranian waters according to the map the British are using.
If the map were the questionable part the Iranian government would have disputed that the British government map was wrong throwing the issue into the disarray of decades of border disputes.
They didn't do that. Instead they released different coordinates that turns the debate into he said she said.
This isn't about a border crossing. This is about forcing the British government to say they lied (whether they did or not,) that the ship was in Iranian waters (or at least inferring such a conclusion by getting the British government to give "Guarantees" that they will not violate Iran's boundaries in the future,) in order to get their servicemen back.
It's all bullsh!t meant to tarnish the image of the only strong ally America has left.
And no...I would not be surprised at all if the whole thing was a setup from the very beginning.
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posted
Nothing will surprise me when it is finally figured out.
I know that we have no actual knowledge what is fact or fiction now or even that either side or both truely believes what they are saying.
It is entirely possible that there is no one conspiring to falsify the details and it is all a terrible mistake. It is possible that both are lying. It is probable that we won't be able to know what is the true case for a long time to come.
I want the Brits to be pure and clean, open and honest (and right), but, I know, that want is due to a bias.
The more we (any of us) holler for one side to be wrong, the less chance we leave for the two sides to reach understanding. I'm for the safe return of the sailors and, hopefully, a meeting of the minds of the two sides without the need for continued disagreement. I certainly don't wish for any young men or women of either side to be hurt before these sides can find a way beyond this and I am convinced that mouthing our biased views of which may be the worser badest guys of the two parties distracts from that posibility rather than works toward it.
This drum roll for violence isn't productive.
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By DAVID STRINGER, Associated Press Writer 50 minutes ago
LONDON - An Iranian opposition group claimed Saturday that Iran's capture of 15 British sailors and marines was planned in advance and carried out in retaliation for the U.N. sanctions imposed against the country, as an Iranian diplomat said the case had entered a legal phase.
Gholam-Reza Ansari, the Iranian ambassador to Russia, made his comments to Russian television Vesti-24 on Friday and was quoted by IRNA on its Web site as saying, "the case of the detention of British sailors has taken on a judicial form."
IRNA originally quoted the ambassador Saturday morning as saying the sailors could be "tried if there is enough evidence of guilt." But the agency published a correction later claiming Ansari's comments were incorrectly translated by Russian television. The Russian TV station could not immediately be reached for comment.
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posted
Ahmadinejad appears to be more reasonable than Bush...
LONDON - Iran on Wednesday freed the 15 detained British sailors and marines in what President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called an Easter gift to the British people. Prime Minister Tony Blair said he bore “no ill will” toward the Iranian people.
posted
Gordon Bennett!!!!... I can't believe you just said this... Just goes to show how deep your hatred for Bush is.
This is the guy that threatened to wipe Israel "off the map" with nuclear weapons.... This is the guy that claims the holocaust never happened....
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posted
NaturalResources!!!!... I can't believe you just said this... Just goes to show how deep your hatred for Ahmadinejad is.
Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to wipe Israel "off the map" because no such idiom exists in Persian. He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse.
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quote:President Ahmadinejad, elected in June, was addressing a conference in Teheran entitled "The World Without Zionism", attended by about 3,000 conservative students, who chanted: "Death to Israel!" and "Death to America!"
"The establishment of the Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world," he said. "As the Imam [the late Ayatollah Khomeini] said, 'Israel must be wiped off the map'… The Islamic world will not let its historic enemy live in its heartland."
quote:Last week, he also expressed doubt about the killing by the Nazis of six million Jews during World War II, but Wednesday was the first occasion when he said in public that the Holocaust was a myth.
"They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets," Ahmadinejad said in a speech to thousands of people in the Iranian city of Zahedan, according to a report on Wednesday from Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.
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Experts confirm that Iran's president did not call for Israel to be 'wiped off the map'. Reports that he did serve to strengthen western hawks.
June 14, 2006 12:49 PM
My recent comment piece explaining how Iran's president was badly misquoted when he allegedly called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" has caused a welcome little storm. The phrase has been seized on by western and Israeli hawks to re-double suspicions of the Iranian government's intentions, so it is important to get the truth of what he really said.
I took my translation - "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" - from the indefatigable Professor Juan Cole's website where it has been for several weeks.
But it seems to be mainly thanks to the Guardian giving it prominence that the New York Times, which was one of the first papers to misquote Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, came out on Sunday with a defensive piece attempting to justify its reporter's original "wiped off the map" translation. (By the way, for Farsi speakers the original version is available here.)
Joining the "off the map" crowd is David Aaronovitch, a columnist on the Times (of London), who attacked my analysis yesterday. I won't waste time on him since his knowledge of Farsi is as minimal as that of his Latin. The poor man thinks the plural of casus belli is casi belli, unaware that casus is fourth declension with the plural casus (long u).
The New York Times's Ethan Bronner and Nazila Fathi, one of the paper's Tehran staff, make a more serious case. They consulted several sources in Tehran. "Sohrab Mahdavi, one of Iran's most prominent translators, and Siamak Namazi, managing director of a Tehran consulting firm, who is bilingual, both say 'wipe off' or 'wipe away' is more accurate than 'vanish' because the Persian verb is active and transitive," Bronner writes.
The New York Times goes on: "The second translation issue concerns the word 'map'. Khomeini's words were abstract: 'Sahneh roozgar.' Sahneh means scene or stage, and roozgar means time. The phrase was widely interpreted as 'map', and for years, no one objected. In October, when Mr Ahmadinejad quoted Khomeini, he actually misquoted him, saying not 'Sahneh roozgar' but 'Safheh roozgar', meaning pages of time or history. No one noticed the change, and news agencies used the word 'map' again."
This, in my view, is the crucial point and I'm glad the NYT accepts that the word "map" was not used by Ahmadinejad. (By the way, the Wikipedia entry on the controversy gets the NYT wrong, claiming falsely that Ethan Bronner "concluded that Ahmadinejad had in fact said that Israel was to be wiped off the map".)
If the Iranian president made a mistake and used "safheh" rather than "sahneh", that is of little moment. A native English speaker could equally confuse "stage of history" with "page of history". The significant issue is that both phrases refer to time rather than place. As I wrote in my original post, the Iranian president was expressing a vague wish for the future. He was not threatening an Iranian-initiated war to remove Israeli control over Jerusalem.
Two other well-established translation sources confirm that Ahmadinejad was referring to time, not place. The version of the October 26 2005 speech put out by the Middle East Media Research Institute, based on the Farsi text released by the official Iranian Students News Agency, says: "This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history." (NB: not "wiped". I accept that "eliminated" is almost the same, indeed some might argue it is more sinister than "wiped", though it is a bit more of a mouthful if you are trying to find four catchy and easily memorable words with which to incite anger against Iran.)
MEMRI (its text of the speech is available here) is headed by a former Isareli military intelligence officer and has sometimes been attacked for alleged distortion of Farsi and Arabic quotations for the benefit of Israeli foreign policy. On this occasion they supported the doveish view of what Ahmadinejad said.
Finally we come to the BBC monitoring service which every day puts out hundreds of highly respected English translations of broadcasts from all round the globe to their subscribers - mainly governments, intelligence services, thinktanks and other specialists. I approached them this week about the controversy and a spokesperson for the monitoring service's marketing unit, who did not want his name used, told me their original version of the Ahmadinejad quote was "eliminated from the map of the world".
As a result of my inquiry and the controversy generated, they had gone back to the native Farsi-speakers who had translated the speech from a voice recording made available by Iranian TV on October 29 2005. Here is what the spokesman told me about the "off the map" section: "The monitor has checked again. It's a difficult expression to translate. They're under time pressure to produce a translation quickly and they were searching for the right phrase. With more time to reflect they would say the translation should be "eliminated from the page of history".
Would the BBC put out a correction, given that the issue had become so controversial, I asked. "It would be a long time after the original version", came the reply. I interpret that as "probably not", but let's see.
Finally, I approached Iradj Bagherzade, the Iranian-born founder and chairman of the renowned publishing house, IB Tauris. He thought hard about the word "roozgar". "History" was not the right word, he said, but he could not decide between several better alternatives "this day and age", "these times", "our times", "time".
So there we have it. Starting with Juan Cole, and going via the New York Times' experts through MEMRI to the BBC's monitors, the consensus is that Ahmadinejad did not talk about any maps. He was, as I insisted in my original piece, offering a vague wish for the future.
A very last point. The fact that he compared his desired option - the elimination of "the regime occupying Jerusalem" - with the fall of the Shah's regime in Iran makes it crystal clear that he is talking about regime change, not the end of Israel. As a schoolboy opponent of the Shah in the 1970's he surely did not favour Iran's removal from the page of time. He just wanted the Shah out.
The same with regard to Israel. The Iranian president is undeniably an opponent of Zionism or, if you prefer the phrase, the Zionist regime. But so are substantial numbers of Israeli citizens, Jews as well as Arabs. The anti-Zionist and non-Zionist traditions in Israel are not insignificant. So we should not demonise Ahmadinejad on those grounds alone.
Does this quibbling over phrases matter? Yes, of course. Within days of the Ahmadinejad speech the then Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was calling for Iran to be expelled from the United Nations. Other foreign leaders have quoted the map phrase. The United States is piling pressure on its allies to be tough with Iran.
Let me give the last word to Juan Cole, with whom I began. "I am entirely aware that Ahmadinejad is hostile to Israel. The question is whether his intentions and capabilities would lead to a military attack, and whether therefore pre-emptive warfare is prescribed. I am saying no, and the boring philology is part of the reason for the no."
posted
LOL... ok, so he said Israel should be "eliminated from the page of history"...
I'm sure his comments regarding the holocaust were mistranslated too.. Right?
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posted
The Iranian president is undeniably an opponent of Zionism or, if you prefer the phrase, the Zionist regime. But so are substantial numbers of Israeli citizens, Jews as well as Arabs.
As a Jew myself, I'm not saying I agree or disagree. I am saying that everyone has opinions. "Wiped off the map" sounded like an imminent threat, which is why you and your ilk cling to it like leeches.
Since when did a man's opinions about a regime constitute a threat and become a valid reason for war?
Since Bush...
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"There is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will wipe off this stigma (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world, ... The World without Zionism."
"Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury."
"Remove Israel before it is too late and save yourself from the fury of regional nations."
"We ask the West to remove what they created sixty years ago [Israel] and if they do not listen to our recommendations, then the Palestinian nation and other nations will eventually do this for them."
"The Zionist regime is a dried up and rotten tree which will be annihilated with one storm."
"If some want to misuse the generosity of our nation, and re-examine what was previously examined, they should know the fire of the anger of the Iranian nation will be extremely burning and devastating."
"The establishment of the Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world. The Islamic world will not let its historic enemy live in its heartland."
"If you want to have good relations with the Iranian people in the future, you should acknowledge the right and the might of the Iranian people, and you should bow and surrender to the might of the Iranian people. If you do not accept this, the Iranian people will force you to bow and surrender."
"They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets."
"The real Holocaust is what is happening in Palestine where the Zionists avail themselves of the fairy tale of Holocaust as blackmail and justification for killing children and women and making innocent people homeless."
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posted
"If you want to have good relations with the Iranian people in the future, you should acknowledge the right and the might of the Iranian people, and you should bow and surrender to the might of the Iranian people. If you do not accept this, the Iranian people will force you to bow and surrender."
now that the hostages are out of the line of fire? it's time for US to send Amadinejad an Easter present of our own....
anybody got any decorated JDAMS? how about pink and purple spotted cruise missiles?
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posted
Hmmm... Not sure about launching missiles or dropping JDAMS...
But, I don't think I'd object someone hiding a few C-4 filled plastic Easter Eggs under his desk....
Seriously though, Ahmadinejad is only a puppet. The true power in Iran is the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei... Ahadinejad is just around to try to make an Islamic dictatorship appear legit in the eyes of the uninformed.
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quote:Originally posted by glassman: now that the hostages are out of the line of fire? it's time for US to send Amadinejad an Easter present of our own....
-------------------- "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
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quote:Originally posted by Gordon Bennett: Why. Did Iran attack us on 9/11?
quote:Originally posted by glassman: now that the hostages are out of the line of fire? it's time for US to send Amadinejad an Easter present of our own....
actually they held some of our people hostage for over a year GB.. you don't have a very good memory...
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posted
Tehran b l o g g e r s see through smoke and mirrors Michael Theodoulou
Iran’s outspoken b lo g g e r s are deeply critical of the way that Tehran is handling the crisis over the captured Britons.
The views expressed by many online diarists are in stark contrast to those of hardline students shown protesting violently outside the British Embassy and baying for the British “aggressors” to be executed for spying.
“I cannot believe these guys in the Iranian administration! What are they trying to achieve keeping these guys?” wrote “Mr Behi”, a popular 29-year-old b l o g g e r who usually writes about cosy, domestic issues and his life as a happily married man in Tehran.
Like many b l o g g e r s writing from inside Iran, he uses an assumed name for his own safety. “Iran is afraid. It is cornered politically and militarily,” he wrote, suspecting that the decision to capture the Britons was a “panic reaction”.
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quote:Originally posted by Gordon Bennett: Oh Christ. Going back that far for an excuse now are we?
it's not an excuse. it's called HISTORY which sets the patterns for tomorrow. Iran has a one party democracy (like we had for a few years).
Iran is even isolated from the majority of teh Muslim world, which you would know if you bothered to do anything but spend all your energy irrationally whining about Bush. Bush LOST the last election. do you realise that a lot of us worked very hard to RATIONALLY redirect our great country back to a two party democracy? your miserable rantings are no longer constructive. they ceased to be constructive the day after the last election. we now have a democratic way to balance out the administration which is what the constitution was designed to allow... in fact? you are, IMO, intentionally destroying any possible meaningful debate by the way you post here... some of your posts have content worth discussing, but your presentaion method just leads to childish insulting beahviour....
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