> Not our fight, let the Brits handle this and stay the hell out of it <
I tend to agree with you. But let me present this scenario to you: One of the seized ships flew the British flag. Let’s suppose that Iran refuses to return the ship. Weeks pass. You are the POTUS. Britain invokes the NATO “an attack against one is an attack against all” clause, and asks for significant US military support to punish Iran.
What would you do?
To say no would be to make NATO‘s mutual defense clause toothless. But maybe that’s just where we are these days.
Not going to happen. This is hardly the first time a NATO member has had its assets attacked, hell, in 1982 the Argentinians invaded the Falklands and the response from one fellow NATO nation (Belgium) was to stop sales of 7.62 ammunition for our standard issue SLR combat rifles.
That mutual aid defence cause has only ever been invoked once, after 9-11 by the United States, but that was after thousands of US citizens had been murdered by Afghan-based terrorists on US soil. Britain isn’t going to invoke this clause for the sake of a few tankers being seized.
Let them handle it first rather than use it as an excuse to go to War with Iran and kill many innocents.
I do a lot of work with Veterans and let me tell you they are not itching to go into Iran over this