Dennis Horak was Canada’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia until he was expelled in August, 2018. He was also head of mission in Iran from 2009-12.
An image grab taken from a broadcast by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) on July 22, 2019, shows a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards onboard a tanker Stena Impero as it's anchored off the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas.HO/AFP/Getty Images
Iran’s seizure of a British tanker in the Persian Gulf last week was not unexpected. Iran could not let the seizure of their own tanker by Britain off the coast of Gibraltar earlier this month go without some kind of response. Iran, in fact, had publicly warned of just such an eventuality (and had tried and failed to seize a vessel earlier).
But the predictability of the response doesn’t lessen the risk it poses both for the Gulf region and Iran itself. We are in for another round of rising tensions in a part of the world where the margin of error is steadily diminishing.
For the Iranian leadership, the tit-for-tat seizure was an easy card to play. It was low-risk, high-reward. It allowed Iran to, again, demonstrate its military capabilities and its intention to respond, if threatened, without the prospect of a military confrontation of the sort that could have emerged had it been a U.S. vessel.
But as is often the case with Tehran, the short-term gain in showing strength may in fact result in longer-term challenges they may not have banked on.
Iran has long pushed for the departure of foreign military powers from the Gulf region. Rising regional tensions, however, have had the opposite effect. Britain and other countries are now in the process of sending additional military vessels into the Gulf to protect international shipping lanes, and the United States has announced the return of U.S. soldiers to Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. None of these moves are in Iran’s interest.
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While Iran’s decision to target Britain was driven by Britain’s initial action, taking on a European Union country for enforcing an EU embargo on Syria was a bold move. Tehran risks igniting retaliatory action by European partners, who have so far remained supportive of the nuclear agreement and opposed to Washington’s “maximum pressure” policy. Incidents such as this are red meat for anti-Iran hawks across Europe and in Washington.
For the moment, cooler heads have prevailed. Britain has conceded that they are in no position to pursue a military response, and London and Tehran have prudently re-engaged to find a diplomatic resolution to the crisis. A solution will eventually emerge, and the ships and their crews will be released and allowed to return home.
But a solution to this immediate crisis will only be another temporary lull. Tensions will remain and new incidents will continue to happen. So far, the various confrontations or incidents – from tanker seizures and mysterious bombings to the shooting down of drones – have been bloodless and, accordingly, relatively easy to contain. But that can change.
The deployment of an international protection force to safeguard shipping lanes is prudent given the challenges, but the potential for accidental military encounters will increase exponentially with every new military asset that comes into the Gulf.
While the seizure of a British ship posed considerable risk for Iran and may have undercut key longer-term interests, for the leadership, the risks in doing nothing were evidently greater. Iran’s response to these kinds of incidents and its seeming willingness to heighten tensions when necessary (for example, the arrest and sentencing of what Iran claims are 17 “CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] spies”), aims to signal Iran’s resolve and resilience. The message from Tehran is a clear and simple one: We have options and we are not afraid to use them.
What’s not clear is whether the hawks in Washington believe it. Most likely retain the delusion that Iran will eventually just roll over and its actions in incidents such as this do nothing to change that view. It is likely that many doubt Tehran would have been as reckless, had this incident involved the U.S. rather than Britain (and they might be right).
Ultimately, ending this lurch from crisis to crisis in the Gulf will require getting at the root, not the symptoms. The opening of a back channel to Tehran through U.S. Senator Rand Paul, is encouraging in that regard (even if Mr. Paul seems so ill-informed about the original nuclear agreement that he has floated options for a new agreement that were already in the old one, i.e. Iranian renunciation of a nuclear weapons option). But squaring the circle will be hard, as Iran’s Foreign Minister made clear in interviews over the weekend when he ruled out any moves that would undermine “Iranian defences”, such as controls on Iranian missiles.
In the meantime, we can expect more of the same, while keeping our fingers crossed that things don’t spin out of control.
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