Tanker-for-Tanker

Iran’s retaliation after an earlier tanker seizure should
have been obvious, so why wasn’t Britain better prepared?

Regardless of
the legality of
the Iranian
actions, British
merchant shipping
was exposed
the minute the
British cabinet
made the decision
to seize an
Iranian vessel.

Some would argue that the U.K. already has more permanent assets in the Persian Gulf than any other Western nation, other than the US. And while this is true and sufficient for steady operations, it is patently not enough for raised security threats.

HMS Montrose during 2012 exercises in the Mediterranean Sea (Photo: Royal Navy Media Archive/Flickr)

One of the roles of military planners is to allocate “troops to task” and it is rare indeed for there to be enough troops for every task. So troops (or “task units”) need to be allocated according to priority.

Clearly there are not enough British task units to protect every U.K.-flagged or owned vessel transiting the Straits of Hormuz. Yet alternate methods should have been put in place, such as enlisting US support for U.K. vessels following the seizure of the Grace 1. Otherwise, if the safety of U.K. shipping could not be guaranteed as a consequence of seizing the Grace 1, then Britain should either have declined to capture the vessel, or sought other less exposed or more robust parties to do the job.

Regardless of the legality of the Iranian actions, British merchant shipping was exposed the minute the British cabinet made the decision to seize an Iranian vessel. And it should have known what the response was going to be (the 2007 HMS Cornwall incident is a good example of the way the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps navy operates) and put in place unilateral or multilateral measures designed to limit the ability of the Iranians to undertake the inevitable retaliation.

Its inability to do so says as much about the Britain’s limited military capability nowadays as it does about the present standard of political Brexit-afflicted decision-making in London.

Dr. Rodger Shanahan is a Research Fellow at the Lowy Institute.

A former army officer, he had extensive service within the Parachute Battalion Group (PBG) and has had operational service with the UN in South Lebanon and Syria, with the PBG in East Timor, in Beirut during the 2006 war, and in Afghanistan. He was the former director of the Army's Land Warfare Studies Centre, and has also been posted to the Australian Embassies in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Dr Shanahan has MAs in International Relations and Middle East Studies from the ANU, and a PhD in Arab and Islamic Studies from the University of Sydney.

This article appeared originally at Lowy Institute's the interpreter.