…might, in former times, have been a casus belli, without doubt, in its own right. After all Hitler started WWII with the pretext of german soldiers having been ambushed by some fake poles. The british have a superior marine, an airplane carrier or two and the atomic bomb. If it were not for the frantic efforts of diplomacy, the crisis might well develop into a little regional war, as the british showed in the Falklands.

The Thirty Years War started with empirial ambassadors being thrown out of a window in Prague. It much depends on the touchiness of two adversaries how things develop, and Iran surely for the moment is not in the best terms with the European Union and the rest of Nato.

At present, the 15 Mariners are prisoners of war already, albeit there being no state of a declared war yet. But the diplomatic contacts have been severed, always a troubling incident in itself.

The british coul use their superior air force, or use a special unit to rescue their countrymen, and I am sure that their secret service is weighing all options. The US has a declared policy of saving every US citizen anywhere in the world, and Jimmy Carter, in a failed helicopter attac, to implement it, when the staff of the US embassy was held hostage by Khomeini in Iran. So there are historical precendes, and all are possibilities for the time being for the British to pursue. It is quite clear that the Blair government will not give way in their demand for the marines.