Picture the following. During a time of heightened tension in the Gulf, a U.S warship, USS Vincennes, falls into a skirmish with Iranian patrol boats over its incursion into Iranian waters. Shortly after the skirmish it sees an incoming jet on its radar and fires two missiles. It’s too late when it transpires that USS Vincennes has just shot down an Iranian civilian Airbus A300 on its way to Dubai killing all 290 people on board including 66 children. Stuff of nightmares you might think or the catalyst for the next Gulf War? No, it happened on 3rd July 1988 and it preceded the end of the Iran - Iraq war in which the U.S was backing Saddam Hussein.

It took several years for U.S officials to admit that the USS Vincennes had intruded into Iranian territorial waters as Iran had claimed. Yet at the time of the disaster USS Vincennes’s return to the U.S was accompanied by an official medal ceremony from the American government to its returning crew, in a bid to legitimise their actions. This story appeared in the Financial Times, 02/04/07 shortly before Iran’s President presented its revolutionary guards with medals for their encounter with British naval personnel. The parallel in the behaviour of both governments is striking.

It comes as no surprise thus given this information, that Britain deliberately asked the U.S to shut up during the Iran hostage crisis and let British diplomats deal with the situation behind closed doors. How refreshing that the British foreign office has finally learnt that when dealing with the Middle East, Uncle Sam’s incredibly dirty past with the Arab and Persian world will not help the advancing of British interests in this region. Britain did have a respectable status amongst Arab governments for its help in founding the Arab free states against the Ottoman Turks. We’ve all but destroyed that with our current foreign policy alignment with the U.S under the present government. Perhaps delving back to 1988 might show that Britain can do much better than ally itself with a country who’s recent actions have all but destroyed its integrity in the middle east.

Filed under: foreignpolicy, history, iraq on April 8th, 2007