The Issue Should Not Be What The Iranians Did

But rather the issue should be that they were capable of doing it because the sailors and marines didn't have the appropriate backup......
Where was HMS Cornwall?

Iran issues a challenge, is anyone up to responding?
From Sky News:

Iran says it took 15 British servicemen hostage at gunpoint because they had crossed into Iranian waters.

The eight Royal Navy sailors and seven Marines were seized by Iranian troops while carrying out a routine inspection in what the British say were Iraqi waters.

According to reports on Iran state television, a British envoy was summoned to the foreign ministry in Tehran.

An unnamed foreign ministry official was quoted as saying the 15 had been "detained by Iran's border authorities for further investigation... of the blatant aggression into Iranian territorial waters".

[. . .]

The servicemen were taking part in a routine operation boarding merchant ships when they were taken captive by Iranian naval vessels.

The men, from the Type 22 frigate HMS Cornwall, were seized in the Shatt Al Arab waterway.
The Royal Navy insists they were operating in Iraqi waters and not Iranian territory.

The commanding officer of HMS Cornwall, Commodore Nick Lambert told Sky News: "I have got 15 sailors and Marines who have been arrested by the Iranians.

Obviously the Cornwall was not nearby or the Iranians would not have dared to pull this stunt.
This is what happens when military commanders become overconfident. The coalition's naval and air superiority is so great that everyone simply forgot that it would be possible for the bad guys to concentrate enough force in one area to achieve this kind of limited victory.
I'll wager that in the future there is better coordination between the different nation's naval and air forces and a better watch kept on any Iranian craft operating in the Gulf. After all one of the threats that Iran has made is to use suicide boat attacks to sink shipping in the Strait of Hormuz in order to disrupt the flow of oil.
It is at times like these that you really miss the old British Empire. They would not have taken this lying down.

Labels: British Sailors Captured, Iran

# posted by Lemuel Calhoon