Leading Seaman Turney's coded message

Sunday Telegraph:

Emblazoned on the side of the Cornwall, the Royal Naval frigate at the centre of the Iranian hostage crisis, is its call sign: F99, or Foxtrot Nine Nine in military radio parlance.

The capture of 15 sailors and Marines operating from the ship nine days ago started a propaganda war the world over. Politicians and the public reacted with revulsion to the parading of the captured sailors on Iranian television last week.

But it was the use of Cornwall's call sign in an Iranian broadcast that provided one of the few moments of encouragement to officials watching anxiously in London.

"My name is Leading Seaman Faye Turney. I come from England," said the 26-year-old mother, whose treatment has attracted the most criticism, in her first appearance in front of the cameras. "I have served in Foxtrot Nine Nine. I've been in the Navy for nine years."

The stilted nature of her delivery indicated that the words had been written by her Iranian captors. To those watching at the Ministry of Defence, it was clear that Leading Seaman Turney was deliberately sending a message that she was being coerced, but was defying her captors.

"The statement was patently script-written," a defence official said. "She referred to Foxtrot Nine Nine instead of HMS Cornwall. The Iranians clearly don't understand how British sailors refer to their ships.

She didn't correct them. She made a point of getting it wrong. That's what our people are trained to do." The mood was upbeat, the official said: "Plucky Brit sends coded messages home."

For the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office it was a rare hopeful moment in a week of secret diplomacy and public grandstanding which began with a series of mistakes and miscalculations that appear to have highlighted Britain's military impotence and waning status as a world power.

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Intelligence chiefs now believe that the operation was orchestrated by elements within the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Council, the military wing of Iran's clerical leaders. Another defence official familiar with the latest intelligence said: "It's the ayatollahs that are behind this. These were clerical troops."

An Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, claimed yesterday that it had obtained intelligence from sources in Iran that Khorramshahr, one of three Iranian naval bases in the Persian Gulf, was on a state of full alert the night before the attack in preparation for the operation.

Hossein Abedini, a spokesman for the NCRI, said that a special unit had been moved to the base for the "carefully concocted operation" and that Rear Adml Morteza Safari, commander of the Iranian navy, was kept in close touch by his commanders as the operation took place.

Despite CIA warnings that British forces could be targeted after the US arrested five members of the al Quds force, the intelligence arm of the Republican Guards, in northern Iraq in January, the Government appeared to have been caught flat-footed.

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Privately senior figures at the Iranian embassy in London expressed surprise at the reaction. A defence source who visited for an informal chat on Friday found incredulous diplomats claiming that the 15 sailors were "guests, not hostages". One Iranian diplomat claimed: "Why aren't people pleased that the sailors are happy and well fed?"

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It is hard to say whether the Iranian embassy is engaging in sarcasm or cynicism. What is clear is that they and the people in Tehran have acted in bad faith from the beginning of this kidnapping extortion plot. While there is criticism that the Navy was caught flatfooted , the response in London has also had that character. One excuse is that the Navy was operating under UN rules of engagement that prohibited firing unless fired upon. If that was the rule it was wholly inappropriate for the circumstances and the Brits should have complained about it.