The Iranians snatched some British sailors that were controlling ships in the Iraqi/Persian Shatt-al-Arab. Such has happened before and was solved without much trouble.

Maybe the UK boats really were in Persian waters, maybe they were not – maybe there was some intent for a conflict on either side, maybe not – who knows or will ever know for sure. Anyhow, this is certainly no reason to start a war.

Another piece of anti-Iranian propaganda was launched today via the BBC:

Col Masherevski said "local information" indicated that "the vast majority of the violence against us is inspired from outside Iraq".

"The people here very much believe that is Iran," he said.

"All the circumstantial evidence points to Iranian involvement in the violence here in Basra which is disrupting the city to a great extent."

The standard of weapons being used against British troops was such that it could only have come from outside Iraq, he said.

There are absolutely no facts in the BBC piece and that mysterious Colonel (zero(!) Google hits for his name) has nothing to provide but rumours.

The sea incident is more usable than the Colonel and so this will be taken up as part of the propaganda campaign to put pressure on Iran and to further the western agenda of disabling Iran by sanctions – "been there done that," Madeleine Albright would say.

This is part of the pattern of threats and intimidation directed against Iran as the very astute badger documents.

There is quite some noise now, though not reflected in the western press, by the non-permanent UN Security Council members to tone down the next resolution on Iran:

South Africa’s proposal aimed to drop all the key sanctions proposed by the major powers, including an arms embargo and financial bans on an Iranian state bank and the Revolutionary Guards, and to suspend all other sanctions for 90 days to allow for more talks with Teheran.

The amendments were offered despite an earlier agreement by Germany and the five permanent members of the 15 member council — The United States, Russia, China, France and Britain — on the wording of the draft resolution.

Pahad said South Africa was within its rights to suggest changes to the draft document, which he said had only been presented to other Security Council members at the last minute.

“The draft resolution was never shown to us, so it’s not wrong for us to make our views known,” he said.

Indeed most countries do support Iran’s right of civil nuclear development:

National leaders of the 118-state Non-Aligned Movement concluding their Havana summit approved a statement on Iran that "reaffirmed the basic and inalienable right of all states, to develop research, production and use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes."

But the war-mongers are cheating the non-permanent, non-aligned UN members on the content of the resolution:

South Africa’s ambassador, Dumisani Kumalo, this month’s council president, expressed dismay.

"They told us we would be negotiating a give and take," he told reporters on Thursday. "They are doing exactly what they said they weren’t going to do."
[…]
Kumalo had also proposed a 90-day "time out" in imposing the sanctions, ..

No chance for that sane moment to happen. The U.S. will continue to bribe and threaten its will through the Security Council and use all of its propaganda outlets to justify its moves and discourage any opposition.

Millions of U.S. government $’s will make sure that the U.S. weapon and oil industry has at least another decade to prosper. Someone, most probably your children, will have to pay for this.