With what? There were no LOS(line of sight) for the 114mm gun and even that would risk hiting the sailors.

Like with Israel in Summer the whole case shows the diletance of the Western culture.

But what is worrying is the lack of decisive force by the mother ship. The commanding officer is likely to have been instructed not to intervene. It is therefore likely to have been a political judgement that prevented HMS Cornwall from pursuing the kidnappers.

Americans may be bemused about why the British have become suddenly weak in the face of Iranian aggression. The lack of political will is due to the power vacuum at the heart of the British government. Blair is due to step down as prime minister in a couple of months and does not appear to be willing to take any decision that could force a difficult situation on his successor (who is likely to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown). Iraq tarnished Blair and Brown probably doesn’t want to be tarnished by a messy conflict with Iran.

The problem is that this enables Iran to extend its sphere of influence over Iraqi territorial waters, which could enable Iran to close Iraq’s access to the Gulf every time the Iraqis go against Tehran’s interests. British indecisiveness in defending Iraqi territorial waters could bolster Iranian attempts to extend its influence across the Shia crescent, from Pakistan to Lebanon. This gives it a very strong regional power base to export terrorism to the West, as it has done in Iraq, Lebanon and Israel and the Arab Gulf states.

Next time they will shoot back if this happens and I am pretty sure had this happened to American marines, they would have fought back hard and killed the regime thugs. However that seems Europeans always want to learn their lessons the hard way and I am, sad to say, glad that Europeans are getting this treatment which they deserve, for supporting the mullahs for 28 long years. That will be a turning point for Europeans to see that mullahs of Iran have used them to prolong their life and misery of the Iranian people.

By the way, soldiers fight, they don’t surrender!

Because the two countries have not agreed on updated charts, that means there is no universal agreement on exactly where the border line runs.

If the seizure occurred near the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab – which is likely – the issue becomes even more complicated because Iraq and Iran have never agreed on each others’ claim to Gulf waters near the mouth of the waterway.

Without such an agreement, international law requires countries not to extend their territorial waters “beyond the median line with neighboring states,” said Martin Pratt of the University of Durham in Britain.

But defining that line is difficult because of conflicting claims to rock formations, sandbars and barrier islands in the shallow waters of the northern Gulf, Pratt said.

As a result, there may be “legitimate grounds for arguing for a different definition” of those median lines, Pratt said.