Iranians ‘will feel they have won’ dispute over sailors
Tehran’s handling of the crisis as a public relations stunt was “brilliant” and will have bolstered domestic support for the regime, according to former Army officer Amyas Godfrey. An associate fellow of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Mr Godfrey, said he was not surprised at the timing of their release.
“It was coming soon. The hints were that the next 48 hours were crucial,” he said.
The manner of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinehjad’s announcement that he was releasing the captives was “straight out of the Borat film”, he added.
“It was very staged, very dramatic. It had what you expect a Middle Eastern nation to do — as when he said ‘this is a gift, this is from our people’,” he said.
Mr Godfrey predicted many Iranians would feel they had won the dispute.
“They handled it as PR for their own country, and their own people and they have handled it brilliantly.
“They got quite a bit out of it. For the rest of the world, I don’t think many people in Europe and other Western nations are that fooled — we see it as propaganda.”
The Iranians were “very lucky” the sailors and marines had not been difficult to handle, he said.
He went on: “I think the Iranians probably figured out fairly quickly that these people didn’t have a lot of information — they’re all fairly junior and doing a routine job in the Gulf. It’s not wartime so there are no secrets about where their ship, HMS Cornwall, is.”
Mr Godfrey was slightly critical of the seized service personnel — the officers in particular — for not standing up to their captors more. “They clearly were not under much duress, although we have no idea what was said to them,” he said.
“Even when thanking the president they were all like very polite English schoolboys,” Mr Godfrey said.
He predicted the crisis would make the military more reticent about operating near Iranian borders.
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