Iran seizes British troops at sea

LONDON — Iranian naval forces seized at gunpoint 15 British sailors and marines who were on a "routine" mission inspecting merchant ships in Iraqi waters, British defense officials said Friday. The capture appears to be deliberate retaliation at a time when Tehran is under mounting pressure at the United Nations, with international financial institutions, and even in Iraq, U.S. officials and Western diplomats said.

Iranian officials charged that the British Royal Navy personnel had illegally entered Iranian waters, Iranian state television reported Friday night. But British officials insisted that the eight sailors and seven marines were in Iraqi waters when they were seized. They had just completed inspection of a merchant ship for possible smuggling when they were surrounded and escorted into Iranian waters, according to British officials.

The Royal Navy patrols Iraqi waters along with the U.S. Navy under the authority of the U.N. Security Council.

The seizure may have been a reprisal for the U.S. detention of five Iranian Revolutionary Guard operatives during a January raid of the Iranian consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil, the U.S. and Western officials said. The five, picked up as part of an intensifying U.S. effort to counter Iran's growing influence in Iraq, were members of the elite al-Quds Brigade that officials said has been deeply involved in arming and aiding Shiite militias in Iraq.

Iran has been demanding their release publicly and in private meetings, including at the first conference of Iraq's neighbors in Baghdad on March 10, a senior U.S. official said Friday. Two other al-Quds force members had been picked up by the United States in Baghdad last December, but were released after a formal request by the Iraqi government.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard naval corps, which operates separately from Iran's navy, were involved in the detention of the British sailors, U.S. officials said. Both incidents involved the Revolutionary Guards, the hard-line wing of Iran's multifaceted military and security services, U.S. officials noted.

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, whose office summoned the Iranian ambassador in London Friday to ask for immediate release of the sailors, said the meeting was "brisk but polite." Beckett said Britain had left Iran "in no doubt that we expect the immediate and safe return of our personnel." Other Western capitals have also weighed in with Iran, and the incident was discussed Friday on the margins of U.N. talks on a new punitive resolution against Iran for failing to suspend uranium enrichment. Enriched uranium can be used for both peaceful nuclear energy as well as a weapons program.