Iran Warns of Possible Trial

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Iran Warns of Possible Trial

The British Foreign Office is demanding consular access to 15 British soldiers captured by Iran, but Tehran is refusing and has indicated that the Britons could be put on trial. It has also reacted to harsher UN sanctions by announcing that it is limiting its cooperation with the world's nuclear authority.

Charged relations between Iran and the West got tenser this weekend, with the unfolding crisis surrounding the capture of British sailors leading to a sharp exchange of words and Iran reacting to tougher United Nations Security Council sanctions by announcing it will suspend some of its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

British Foreign Minister Margaret Beckett demanded Sunday that Iran give British diplomats access to the 15 members of the Royal Navy who were detained last Friday by Iran. In a telephone call with her Iranian counterpart she made it very clear that the sailors had been in Iraqi waters, according to a British Foreign Office spokesman. The British government has yet to be given access to the group of 14 men and one woman.

There are signs that Tehran is considering putting the British military personnel on trial. General Ali Reza Afshar, Iran's top military official, said on Saturday that the seized Britons had been taken to Tehran for questioning and had confessed under interrogation to "aggression into the Islamic Republic of Iran's waters."

Legal proceedings

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, speaking at a press conference in New York on Sunday, said the captured Britons were involved in "the illegal entrance into Iranian territorial waters and this issue is being considered legally." He said: "The Iranian authorities had intercepted these sailors and marines in Iranian waters and detained them in Iranian waters."

The comments were seen as a direct rebuff to the British prime minister's demands earlier in the day that the military personnel be released. Tony Blair had insisted that the sailors were in Iraqi waters at the time of their arrest. He said the detention of the personnel was "unjustified and wrong." And added "It is simply not true that they went into Iranian territorial waters and I hope the Iranian government understands how fundamental an issue this is for us." He said he wanted the issue "resolved in as easy and diplomatic a way as possible."

Britain's ambassador to Iraq, Iran Geoffrey Adams, has met with government officials but could not gain access to the British military personnel. He was told by an Iranian foreign ministry official that they were "well and sound" and that "legal proceedings" were under way.

Iranian student groups have called for the Britons to be held until the United States releases five Revolutionary Guard members captured in Iraq in January. Al-Sharq al-Awsat, a Saudi-owned newspaper based in London, quoted an unidentified Iranian military source as saying that the aim of the capture had been to trade the Royal Marines for these Guards. "Orders were given to the marine units of the Guards to implement the first part of the plan which included besieging one of the British naval patrols in charge of combating smuggling and arrest the soldiers."

However, Iranian state television on Monday read a statement from Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mehzi Mostafavi denying that Tehran had any aim of a prisoner exchange.

Ali Pahlavan, editor of Iran News, a Tehran-based newspaper, told the BBC that the move could be a strategy "to challenge British and American supremacy in this part of the world, which is troubling because this could lead to confrontation and this could be the trigger and could lead to escalation."

UN sanctions

Other radical groups are demanding that the sailors only be released when the sanctions against Iran are lifted. According to the London Times, there is now some speculation among diplomats that the British sailors were ambushed by a naval unit of the Revolutionary Guards in order to put pressure on Britain ahead of the Security Council vote on imposing harsher sanctions.

Nevertheless, the sanctions were imposed after a vote on Saturday night and the Iranians reacted by announcing that they would reduce their cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The Iranian government will only reverse this decision when the UN sends the issue back to the IAEA, government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham said on Sunday.

According to Elham, the cabinet had decided to suspend "codes 1-3 of the minor arrangements of the safeguards," with the IAEA. These codes commit the Iranian government to informing the UN nuclear watchdog of any new steps or decisions it takes with its nuclear program.

The scaling back of cooperation with the IAEA is retaliation for the new sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council on Saturday, which Elham called "illegal and bullying."

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad criticized the sanctions as the result of "hostility of some powers against Iran." Speaking on state television, Ahmadinejad said that the enemies of Tehran had made another mistake and that the Iranian uranium enrichment program would not be halted "even for one second."

Foreign Minister Mottaki said the resolution would have consequences. He insisted that Tehran had tried to negotiate with the permanent members of the Security Council and Germany and added that the sanctions were "illegal, unwarranted, and unjustified" and that they undermined the credibility of the Security Council.

The Security Council voted unanimously in favor of a second resolution on Saturday night in the hope of persuading Iran to forgo its nuclear program. The West suspects that the civilian energy program is in fact a program to develop nuclear weapons. The sanctions include a ban on Iranian arms exports and freezes the assets of 28 people and organizations involved in Iran's nuclear and missile program, many of which are linked to the Revolutionary Guard.

The IAEA is due to deliver a report in 60 days on whether Iran has halted uranium enrichment. If it has failed to do so the mullah regime could face even tougher UN sanctions.