KEY POINTS:
As 15 members of the Armed Forces arrived back in Britain from their captivity by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the officer already named by leaders of the Iraqi insurgency prize as the man they most want to capture is preparing to leave for Basra.
That officer is Second Lieutenant Harry Wales of the Household Cavalry.
The third in line to the throne declared himself to be "over the moon" when the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, agreed to his being sent as the officer in command of a troop of 12 men in four Scimitar light tanks.
Dannatt took this decision only after lengthy Army consultations with the Royal Household and Government ministers.
I suspect that of those three groups, far and away the most reluctant was the Army itself. This is not a reflection on Harry Wales' soldiering qualities.
Leaders of Shiite militias, some of them thought to be backed by Iran, have issued the starkest of threats should Harry set foot in Iraq.
One leader of the insurgency claims: "We planted our people inside British bases and they are our constant source of information. They have orders to track Prince Harry's movements. Once we have that information we will make appropriate plans to capture him. I hope we succeed so that we can negotiate the release of our brothers ... as well as the departure of British troops from our country."
Boastful and vainglorious as that sounds, senior officers in the armed forces are increasingly concerned, not just about the safety of Second Lieutenant Wales, but of all the men accompanying him. They will be put at great risk, for no discernable military reason. As one officer said: "They will be part of the most sought-after target in all of Iraq."
It's not surprising that the Royal Household, by contrast, seems unreservedly enthusiastic about Prince Harry's imminent posting. He has made very clear his own desperate desire to serve on the frontline and threatened to leave the Army if he was not sent.
"There's no way I'm going to put myself through Sandhurst and then sit on my arse back home while my boys are out fighting for their country," he said.
Since the death of his mother, when he was just 11, Harry has seemed something of a lost soul. It isn't as if he has had a strong and ever-present father to fill that vast parental gap - not that it could be filled.
His occasionally wild and frequently erratic behaviour is sadly predictable in these circumstances, but within a life seemingly devoid of discipline, either financial or parental, the Army has offered some sort of direction and meaning - and a camaraderie that goes way beyond mere sycophancy.
It would be very cruel to deny Prince Harry that - but at the same time the Army has an absolute duty of care to all its personnel, not least in what amounts to a war zone
There are echoes here of what happened 25 years ago, when the same institutions of the state agonised over whether Prince Andrew, then second in line to the throne, should be sent on active service as a helicopter pilot with the naval taskforce sent to recapture the Falkland Islands.
Prince Andrew's commanding officer in the Falklands, Ralph Wykes-Sneyd, last month recalled how the Argentine military junta had plotted to capture Prince Andrew "and parade him through the streets of Buenos Aires".
Wykes-Sneyd argues Prince Harry's position would be much more vulnerable. "There is a difference between sea operations and land operations - you fight a war at much greater distance from the enemy. You're much less likely to end up in the enemy's hands."
One can only hope that if the worst does happen and Harry's troop are threatened with capture, they have different rules of engagement from those allegedly given to the 15 sailors and Royal Marines picked up in the Shatt-al-Arab waterway.
The Royal Navy - the body of men which used to terrify Britain's enemies and repelled more heavily armed invaders for centuries - has told us that they would not have been expected either to flee or to resist their capture, admittedly by a much greater number of Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
The larger British force which was supposed to be protecting them, HMS Cornwall, was neither in sight nor in radio contact, for reasons which doubtless will emerge during a Royal Navy Board of Inquiry.
What if, heaven forbid, Prince Harry was captured as a hostage by the Iraqi insurgent groups who have promised to do just that? Again, it must be hoped that he does not have the same training as that which we are told ruled the actions of the 15 seized in what the British Government insists were not Iranian waters.
It's not for a journalist who has never fired a weapon in his life to cast doubt on the actions of those 14 men and one woman. Yet soldiers of an earlier generation seem also to be perplexed by the way in which even the Marines among them participated in what seemed to be a sort of Iranian propaganda version of Big Brother, complete with confessions.
Nowadays the armed forces have "Conduct after Capture" procedures which don't rest on the old rubric of "Name, rank and serial number". Admiral Sir Alan West, the former head of the Navy, says: "Our guidance to anyone in that position would be to say what they want you to say. Don't tell them secrets, but if they tell you, 'Say this', well if that's going to get you out, then do it."
Well, it worked. They said exactly what their Iranian interrogators wanted and now they are free, to the relief of their friends and family.
I do wonder, however, if the methods described by the Admiral are quite as easy for the captive as he makes out.
It purports to give complete discretion to the individual who has been held; but this could be as much a burden as a relief. In practice it hands the initiative to the interrogator, who in effect can decide what his prisoner will do or say.
Knowing this can only make the insurgents in and around Basra even keener - if that is possible - to capture Harry. If it appears humiliating for the Marines to have apologised for something they didn't do (assuming their GPS satellite was working) imagine how much more grotesque it would be to witness poor Harry reading out a script denouncing British imperialist aggression.
Of all President Ahmadinejad's remarks in his bizarre press conference with the released sailors and marines, the oddest of all was his plea to the British Government "not to blame them for confessing".
Iran's President obviously has no idea what sort of a country Britain has become.
- Independent
