Prince Harry will definitely go to Iraq, unless he doesn’t

After several days of public nail biting and second thoughts, it’s official: Prince Harry will be deployed to Iraq this month.

Britain’s senior army commander said Monday that he had personally decided to go ahead with the first royal assignment to active combat since the Falklands War in 1982 but was prepared to keep the matter open for review.

“The decision has been taken he will deploy,” Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt, the army chief of staff, told the BBC. Saying he hoped to end the “somewhat frenzied media speculation around this issue,” Dannatt said he had made the decision after the “widest possible consultation.”

Harry, 22, third in line to the British throne and a graduate of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, has expressed his willingness to deploy with his regiment, the Blues and Royals, to southern Iraq.

But the last month has seen an upsurge in attacks on British forces in Iraq, with 12 killed. Two soldiers from the Queens Royal Lancers died late last month on a mission believed to be similar to the kind the prince is likely to undertake: patrolling the desert in an armored reconnaissance vehicle.

Their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb. Military officials say increasingly sophisticated and powerful weapons are being directed at British forces, including those in armored vehicles.

More worrying for many is the fact that several Iraqi militants have made it clear they are looking forward to the prince’s arrival with malevolent glee.

“We are awaiting the arrival of the young, handsome, spoilt prince with bated breath and we confidently expect he will come out into the open on the battlefield,” Abu Zaid, commander of the Malik ibn al Ashtar Brigade of the Shiite Al Mahdi militia, told the Observer in Iraq.

“We will be generous with him. For he will return to his grandmother [the queen], but without ears,” Abu Zaid said, adding that the prince’s photograph had been downloaded from the Internet and distributed to militants.

A Sunni insurgent leader told the newspaper that his group had people “planted” on British military bases who would track Harry’s movements.

Two former defense ministers came out last week against the royal deployment.

“It’s clear that he could be a target, either for murder or kidnapping, and if that occurred it would be a disaster for Britain,” Michael Portillo, defense secretary under former Prime Minister John Major, told the BBC.

John Nott, Defense Ministry chief during the Falklands conflict, warned that Harry’s presence could threaten the safety of the soldiers around him.

“The notion of a government as innately incompetent as ours dealing with the third in line to the throne being taken hostage by a vicious enemy is terrifying even to contemplate,” the Telegraph newspaper said in an editorial.

But London-based defense analyst Tim Ripley said the level of the specific threat against the prince had been exaggerated.

“Once he’s got his uniform on, his helmet on and he’s in a tank, how do they know it’s him?” he said.

Ripley said a decision not to send the prince would be a much harder order.

“It would be a devastating blow to the morale of the British army in Iraq if, as a result of a huge amount of media froth, he didn’t go on account of it’s too dangerous,” he said. “What do you tell the thousands of other troops, along with their families, who have to go?

“Yes, he’s a prince, but he’s in the army, he’s got the uniform, he’s got the training, and he joined because he wants to be a proper soldier,” Ripley said. “At this stage of the game, it would be a real smack in the face of everybody else. You’ve got one soldier who really wants to go, and you’re not letting him?”

Dannatt said he would continually review the situation. “If circumstances are such that I change that decision, I will make a further statement,” he said.

kim.murphy@latimes.com