Iran's IRGC seizes two Greek oil tankers in Persian Gulf waters (Retaliation for Greek's seizing an Iranian tanker at behest of USA?)

Governments are uncoordinated massive bureaucracies acting independently of one another. So, America goes to whoever it deals with in Greece and files the appropriate paperwork. It gets put into the “process” and a tanker gets seized. Nobody in the Greek government says, “what are the follow-on effects going to be?” That’s probably because no one in the Greek government will be the ones to suffer those effects. The effects will be suffered by a private company. This should be a lesson to every government when the US asks them to do something. Doubtless the Greek government has no easy way to evaluate the follow-on effects. It should tell the USA, “we’ll tell you when it leaves port. When it’s in international waters you can do whatever you wish.” Probably, though, they are bound by treaty to respond as they did.

From the US’ perspective, it’s a bad idea to subject our partners to this sort of blackmail they can’t deal with and we should endeavor to keep them out of it.

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