Tensions run high in the Persian Gulf as the diplomatic crisis perpetuated by Iran taking 15 British mariners as prisoners runs the risk of escalating into military skirmishes, which could unleash another Gulf War.

The incident will only aggravate the UN Security Council to push for sanctions as the issue is taken up for debate later in the day.

Not in a position to defend the country’s intention of developing nuclear weapons and the impending sanctions, President Ahmadanijad chose not to attend the UN Security council meeting, for he would have to defend the action of revolutionary guards capturing the British marines too.

A predator becomes more dangerous when wounded

This act of the seizure of British Royal Marines by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) may complicate the Iran issue and even justify America’s point to play hardball but a part of it is certainly in retaliation to the detention of six of its officials in the Iraqi city of Erbil, taken from the Iranian consulate in January.

Also an Iranian political message

This incident may have been an Iranian political message to the U.S. and the world or a reminder that Iran has assets in the gulf to threaten America and its allies there.

Why is the urgency now?

The United States and its allies, which holds a strategic stake in their sovereignty is unlikely to sit idly as Iran blackmails and increases the volume of its militancy, it is even more unlikely that these states would capitulate to a nuclear Iran rather than rely on an American deterrent threat.

After the bashings and lashings and still struggling to find a way out of the Iraq fiasco, the US president knows now he’s not virtually on his own with this one. However, his lame duck buddy Tony Blair, who was in no position to justify his position in the Gulf and perpetrate a fresh nuclear adventure while sitting on the broken shoulders of the US but with this move of IRGC things have changed. It is something that President Bush was anticipating for long in order to drag Blair in a nuclear adventure (read pit) that he would have missed otherwise.

The only thing we would not like to see this time is diplomacy running its course and inflammatory rhetoric that war may be in the air in the Middle East. This time it seems more pronounced and by the time, I am writing this post, UN should have identified or developed a realistic strategy for victory over Iran’s nuclear enrichment.

Image Credit