Bridge over undefined waters
Posted by concernedresident on July 24, 2007
Via PP, an Aussie news site has picked up on a little reported story that the map used during the Iranian hostage crisis might have been less than accurate:
A BRITISH map of the northern Gulf where Iran seized 15 naval personnel in March was not as accurate as it should have been and Britain was fortunate Iran did not contest it, a review into the crisis said…
A British Ministry of Defence map published during the crisis showed a territorial water boundary extending from the Shatt al-Arab waterway that separates Iran and Iraq out to sea.
However experts say no maritime boundary between the two countries has been agreed and the line was based on a 1975 land boundary that could have shifted over time if the centre of the waterway had moved due to natural causes.
This was the map that was quoted as gospel by newspapers and broadcasters. It was frequently used as a way of explaning how the British patrol boat was still in international waters and, by connection, that the Iranian action was illegal. It often appeared as a graphic, or was quoted without attribution by reporters. Its credibility was reified as an irrefutable fact and almost like a pack British journalists seemed reluctant to look into this with any detail. At the time I remember only Craig Murray dissenting from the party line.
It was a crap time to be a consumer of news. Sure we all wished the safe return of the captives but for a newspack that’s said by its worst critics to be ‘feral’ and ’cynical’ it was anything but during the crisis. The emphasis in coverage seemed to back the official position, with no questioning early on of how the negotiations were proceeding or whether the British case was cast iron. The smallest chance that the Iranian action may have been legitimate was dealt with as an impossibility. I can understand that journalists may have thought that it wasn’t the time to undermine the government’s handling of the crisis, especially as lives were involved, but I can’t think of any other time where a hack has sat down and thought ‘I won’t run this story, it might upset the course of government business’. It was patroitism at work here - of a kind we rarely see, and that if not controlled can let us loose from our criticial facilities and print uncertainties as certainties and lies as facts.
July 24, 2007 at 2:46 pm
As I understand this, the “line on the map” was the correct interpretation of the 1975 Treaty.
It’s credibility was reified by the fact that Iran and Iraq had not renegotiated the border and therefore the British had no option or right other than to use that line.
You say that:
>”I can’t think of any other time where a hack has sat down and thought ‘I won’t run this story, it might upset the course of government business’.”
That’s quite an accusation, and it looks to me like an assumption. You then state “it was patriotism at work”, even though you present no evidence that “it” actually occurred.
Have you got any evidence that they did that? If not, then I’d suggest you rephrase the paragraph.
As far as I know, the only place anywhere that ran the story was Al-Jazeera, and they got it from a US Navy briefing. Hardly “The West” suppressing unhelpful information there. I blogged it on March 26th (link on my name).
July 24, 2007 at 2:55 pm
And the Daily Mail’s website. I never suggested that the information was being supressed in some way, but the whole issue seemed to be left unquestioned.
The fact that there had been no agreement between the two parties since the 1970s should have been flagged up more than it was - and that we were looking at an old map. This was rarely mentioned when the map was used. I pose that it was sense of banal patriotism which may have lead to these facts being overlooked because there doesn’t seem to be any other explanation. There was a sense in the coverage that the media had gotten behind the navy and was ‘backing our boys’ - which was fine, except that in return we had little critical coverage until after the event took place.
July 24, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Thaks for your reply.
I’ll reply on mmy blog later. Currently I cannot get in (isp tech trouble) and I am under siege from Harry Potter enthusiasts wanting to hear him talk about cricket.