Infighting muddies the waters as Iran captive crisis goes on

TEHRAN —  A fractured Iranian leadership sent mixed signals Friday over the capture of 15 British marines and sailors, further clouding its intentions in the crisis.

Iran ignored protests by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and released another videotaped confession of a detainee, as well as a letter criticizing British foreign policy purportedly written by the lone female captive, Faye Turney.

At the same time, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative in the security forces pressed for the release of Turney.

A flurry of diplomatic efforts by British, Iranian, Japanese, Australian, Turkish and Iraqi officials failed to resolve the standoff, which took on shades of similar crises involving Iran, such as the 1979 storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the 1989 fatwa, or ruling, issued against Salman Rushdie in response to the British author’s novel “The Satanic Verses.”

In both cases, a weak Tehran government, riven by factional infighting, sought to stifle opposition and rally support by fomenting an international crisis. The price in each case was high. The hostage-taking was the start of 28 years of friction between Tehran and Washington. The Islamic decree that Rushdie be killed meant diplomatic ties between London and Tehran suffered for nearly a decade.

This time the factional squabbling arose over the issue of releasing Turney. Iranian Foreign Ministry officials had initially said they would release her soon as a gesture of goodwill, but they later reneged, saying they disliked the tone of Britain’s protests.

The Revolutionary Guard, the group presumably holding the Britons, has made a point of broadcasting videotapes of the detainees despite London’s demands that it treat them in accord with international standards.

Foreign Ministry officials, some loosely allied with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have demanded that Britain apologize before Iran will consider granting consular access to the detainees or releasing them from custody.

Reformists and opposition figures in Iran have begun to criticize the government’s actions as counterproductive and harmful to the country’s image and long-term goals.

Small ultraconservative groups, especially those rooted in honoring the legacy of soldiers killed in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, have been calling for immediate trial of the detainees on charges of violating Iran’s territorial waters, or for using the Britons as leverage to obtain the freedom of the handful of Iranian officials held by U.S. forces in Iraq.

“The capture of the Britons and the ensuing crisis provide the favorable conditions for the militarism-minded individuals in power,” said Saeed Madani, a leader of the Freedom Movement of Iran, an outlawed but tolerated opposition group.

“To this end, militarists will try their best to avoid any resolution of the crisis in the short term,” he said.

Friday prayer leaders throughout the country echoed the demands of some of those calling for a trial.

“We are looking neither for a conflict nor tension in the region,” prayer leader Ahmad Khatami told worshipers in Tehran. “But we will not allow any country to violate our territory, and especially not Britain, which has no positive record in Iranian history.”

But the Khamenei spokesman, mid-ranking cleric Mohammad Ali Rahmani, called for the release of Turney.

“In order to show Iran’s special respect for women to the world and the implementation of Iran’s policy of detente, and in view of her admission, it would be better to release the female sailor,” Rahmani told the state-run Mehr news agency.

British officials insist that the 15 personnel, who were taken prisoner March 23, were on a routine inspection mission in the territorial waters of Iraq, where the American and British military help the Baghdad government under United Nations mandate.

Britain has demanded that the captives be released immediately, and on Thursday it obtained a U.N. Security Council statement calling for an end to the crisis.

Iran alleges that the 14 men and one woman illegally entered Iranian waters. Both sides have released maps and GPS coordinates that they say bolster their cases.

Political analysts say the seizure may have been an attempt to forestall internal criticism of Iran’s uncompromising stance on its uranium enrichment program, which drew new sanctions from the Security Council on March 24.

Ahmadinejad and conservative elements in the security forces had apparently miscalculated the extent of international unity on the nuclear issue.

“There are different views [in Iran] on how the relationship with the U.N. and the International Atomic Energy Agency should be played out,” said Charles Dunbar, a former U.S. diplomat and Iran expert at Boston University.

“There was some concern about the need to be more forthcoming in the discussions. But the more radical folks needed to have something to create a diversion, which is the point of taking the British sailors,” he said.

Iranian Foreign Ministry officials have warned that U.N. and European Union involvement would only hinder resolution of the case.

“The Britons have to admit that their sailors have strayed into Iran’s waters and they must give us guarantees to not repeat it,” Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in a conversation with his Japanese counterpart, according to state-run media.

“Instead of adopting a proper diplomatic approach and taking positive steps, Britain has politicized the issue.”

British diplomats in Tehran are well aware of the factional jostling, but they face their own pressures at home from tabloids decrying Britain’s helplessness in the matter.

Blair vowed to try to enlist Western allies to isolate Iran. European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, at a meeting of European foreign ministers in Bremen, Germany, called the incident “a big mistake” and said the “British soldiers should be released immediately and without preconditions.”

The video and letter released Friday drew swift condemnation from Blair.

“I really don’t know why the Iranian regime keeps doing this,” the British prime minister said. “All it does is enhance people’s disgust at the captured personnel being paraded and manipulated in this way. It doesn’t fool anyone.”

A spokesman for Blair has called the videos a possible breach of the Geneva Convention, which bans subjecting prisoners of war to “intimidation, insults or public curiosity.”

In the video, Royal Marine rifleman Nathan Thomas Summers, seated next to Turney and another detainee, apologized for crossing into Iranian waters.

“I’m grateful that no harm has come to us. I would like to apologize for entering your waters without any permission,” Summers said, speaking in front of a pink curtain and looking healthy and relaxed.

Summers said he was “quite satisfied” with his conditions. “Since we have been arrested in Iran our treatment has been very friendly,” he said.

In Turney’s alleged letter, she asked members of Britain’s Parliament to consider pulling out of Iraq.

“I believe that for our countries to move forward, we need to start withdrawing our forces from Iraq and leave the people of Iraq to start rebuilding their lives,” Turney allegedly wrote.

Some British officials suggested that Summers’ confession and those by Turney were coerced by Iranian authorities. But the two service members, operating out of violence-plagued Iraq, also may have been following standard survival guidelines for currying favor with kidnappers.

Though the international standoff has roiled oil prices and galvanized British public opinion, it has been met largely with apathy in Iran, where many people are on New Year’s vacation.

Summers’ confession was broadcast on Iran’s Arabic-language Al Alam channel, which most Persian-speaking Iranians don’t watch.

Eyes were fixed instead on the annual match between Esteghlal and Persepolis, the country’s most popular soccer clubs. The match, which ended in a 1-1 tie, drew 70,000 spectators to Azadi Stadium in Tehran.

“If someone is screaming in your ear 24 hours a day, after a while you won’t hear it,” said Hassan, 42, a downtown fabric wholesaler who asked that his last name not be published. “Sanctions, threats, resolutions, wars -- we don’t hear it anymore.”

daragahi@latimes.com

Times staff writers Kim Murphy in London and Jeffrey Fleishman in Berlin contributed to this report.