For the second time in days the U.S. Navy has saved Iranian fishermen. As you will recall, it was earlier this month that the Navy rescued Iranian fishermen being held by Somali pirates. That incident came amid rising tensions and threats from Iran that it would close the strategic Strait of Hormuz (through which 20 percent of the world’s oil flows) in retaliation for Western sanctions. This report from The Washington Post nicely contrasts the humanitarian U.S. actions with the recent threats from Iran:
A U.S. Coast Guard cutter, the Monomoy, picked up the Iranians off the coast of Oman about 3 a.m. Tuesday after their cargo dhow, the Ya-Hussayn, signalled with flares and flashlights that they were having engine trouble, Navy officials said [...] On Thursday, the Navy liberated 13 Iranian fishermen who had been hijacked and held hostage for several weeks by Somali pirates, also in the Arabian Gulf. In both cases, U.S. officials portrayed the Iranian sailors as extremely grateful for the emergency help — a sharp counterpoint to the Iranian government’s recent threat of war if U.S. forces don’t stay out of the nearby Persian Gulf. “Without your help, we were dead,” Hakim Hamid-Awi, the owner of the Ya-Hussayn, was quoted as saying by a U.S. Fifth Fleet account of the rescue. “Thank you for all that you did for us.” The Good Samaritan acts by U.S. forces also stood in contrast to the Iranian government’s harsh announcement Monday that it had sentenced an Iranian-American citizen to death, allegedly for spying.
This report from the Christian Science Monitor also does the same with this well-worded headline: Iran keeps issuing threats, US keeps saving Iranian sailors
Will the U.S. rescue operations have any impact on the crisis over Iran’s nuclear program? Not likely. We can hope that reports of these rescues will reach the ears of Iranian citizens and lead them to question the anti-American propaganda fed to them by their government. Even if that happened, recent events in Iran would make us question what role, if any, public opinion plays in shaping Iranian foreign policy. Just ask those democratic reform activists. Oh wait, you can’t, because they were imprisoned or executed.
The rescues at sea are in keeping with the finest traditions of the U.S. Navy. They are also an example of what political scientists call “international norms,” broadly accepted standards of international behavior. There’s not a navy in the world that would ignore a distress call. It’s clear that if Iran were to obtain a nuclear weapon the entire region would send out a distress call. Hopefully the U.S. Navy will still be on hand (budget permitting) to lead the rescue.
Image Credit: Christian Science Monitor/U.S. Navy/AP