NATO Watch Comment
"Read my lips: no new taxes" is a well-known phrase spoken by then US presidential candidate George H. W. Bush at the 1988 Republican National Convention. It is widely believed to have helped Bush win the presidential election later that year. Once he became president, however, Bush raised taxes as a way to reduce the national budget deficit.
I was reminded of this infamous sound-bite when two of NATO’s top officials went on record recently to say that NATO has no plans to intervene in Iran.
In a Euronews interview on 24 January, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen stressed that “NATO has no intention whatsoever to intervene” in Iran, adding that “we support the international, political and diplomatic efforts to find a solution”. When pressed on NATO’s reaction if Iran were to carry through on its threat to block the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil supplies pass, he said “It’s a hypothetical question, and once again let me stress we have no intention whatsoever to intervene. But of course we urge the Iranian leadership to live up to its international obligations, stop the enrichment programme and also allow free navigation in the Strait of Hormuz”.
Similarly, Admiral James Stavridis, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, told a panel discussion in Berlin on the same day that the Alliance "is not as an organisation focused on potential engagement in Iran at all".
Does that sound like an unequivocal commitment to steer well clear of any military engagement with Iran? It does to me. But wait a moment. The previous day, the US ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder, appeared to leave the door ajar for NATO intervention when he said that international navies will keep the Strait of Hormuz open in the face of Iranian threats to close it. “I have not looked at the exact military contingency plannings that there are and how long that would take,” Daalder told the BBC. “But of this I am certain: the international waterways that go through the Strait of Hormuz are to be sailed by international navies including ours, the British and the French and any other navy that needs to go through the Gulf; and second, we will make sure that that happens under every circumstance”.
And to reinforce the point, three of those ‘international navies’—US, British and French warships—were at that very moment sailing as a group through the strait “to underline the unwavering international commitment to maintaining rights of passage under international law”, according to a UK Ministry of Defence statement.
So, not so clear cut after all? And if force is used to try and keep the passageway open, would these international navies “do what needs to be done” as a NATO mission or as a coalition of the willing? Watch this space.
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