The Redhunter

Wow. I'd forgotten how fast Maggie's response was.

Yes I know that there's a difference between the seizure of 15 sailors and Royal Marines and a piece of real estate. But on the other hand the military junta ruling Argentina was not really a threat to anyone but it's own citizens. The seizure of the Falklands was as much an attempt to divert public opinion from the failures of the junta as it was an expression of nationalism etc. Iran, or the "Khumeinist" as I think a is more accurate term, are a threat to the region and indeed the world. They are on the fast track to acquiring nuclear weapons, and if they choose to use them Western concepts of deterrance will not deter them.

Further, yes I know that the Royal Navy of today is a shell of what they had during the Cold War, to say nothing of earlier days. As Arthur Herman pointed out earlier this week, not only has the Royal Navy been dramatically cut in size, in the past few years, but "by this time next year, the once-vaunted Royal Navy will be about the size of the Belgian Navy, while its officers face a five-year moratorium on all promotions." If you don't believe me consider this chart (click to enlarge)

At the time of the Falklands War the Royal Navy consisted of 50 frigates. Today it has 17. You get the point.

But what ultimately separates Thatcher from Blair is that the former knew that agression much be met with force or the credible threat of force immediately. You do not deal with a schoolyard bully by going to the teacher, but by whacking him with your textbook. Likewise, the Argentinians knew that while diplomats like Secretary of State Alexander Haig shuttled back and forth between London and Buenos Aires, the task force was slowly making its way south. And when it arrived, the time for diplomacy would be over. The Argentinian generals knew that the clock was ticking down to zero hour.

This time the clock is ticking upwards. The Khumeinists believe that they can keep the hostages as long as they like and there will be no military consequences. Blair has sent forth no task force and likely never will. The Argentinian generals lost their military gamble, but the truth is that it was a near-run thing that could have gone the other direction. The Khumeinists will likely not even have to risk a military gamble.

The irony is that the military balance is far more lopsided this time than it was in 1982, this despite Tony Blair's near emasculation of the Royal Navy. Although the Royal Navy has shrunk in size from times past, it is still larger and much more capable than anything the Iranians have. In addition, this time the British could most likely count on direct military support from the United States. In the Falklands War the Brits were largely on their own, with only limited logistical support from the US.

Further, there is much more that we could do today to harm the Khumeinists. Their economy is largely dependant on oil shipments, and we have many bases and a large fleet in the Persian Gulf right now. It would be very easy for us to blockade Iran.

The sad thing is that we don't even really need to resort to military force, even of the blockade type. If the European Union meant anything, they'd rally around a "member nation" and stop trade with Iran. As Mark Steyn pointed out in another editorial "the European Union is the Islamic Republic's biggest trading partner, accounting for 40 percent of Iranian exports." The EU could seriously punish Tehran if it wanted to. But it doesn't want to. One suspects that many Europeans secretly think that the British deserve this for their unholy alliance with the hated Bush.

To be sure, retaliation works the other way round too. There was not much the Argentinians could do around the world to make trouble for the British, whereas the Khumeinists can certainly give us a very difficult time.

But at least in the short run there is an awful lot we can do to punish the Iranians. We currently have the John Stennis and Eisenhower battle groups in the gulf. The French carrier Clemenceau is there as well, less capable than ours but could serve very well as a blockade enforcer. It is the British who are lacking in power. It is my understanding that the only ship they have in the region is the frigate HMS Cornwall, the very ship from which the sailors and marines are from.

What about the UN? Wasn't it supposed to resolve all these issues? Here's Steyn again in the article linked to above (hat tip LGF)

The U.N. will do nothing for men seized on a U.N.-sanctioned mission. The European Union will do nothing for its "European citizens." But if liberal transnationalism is a post-modern joke, it's not the only school of transnationalism out there. Iran's Islamic Revolution has been explicitly extraterritorial since the beginning: It has created and funded murderous proxies in Hezbollah, Hamas and both Shia and Sunni factions of the Iraq "insurgency." It has spent a fortune in the stans of Central Asia radicalizing previously somnolent Muslim populations. When Ayatollah Khomeini announced the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, it was not Iranians but British, Indian, Turkish, European, Asian and American Muslims who called for his death, firebombed bookstores, shot his publisher, fatally stabbed his translator and murdered anybody who got in their way.

So we live today in a world of one-way sovereignty: American, British and Iraqi forces in Iraq respect the Syrian and Iranian borders; the Syrians and Iranians do not respect the Iraqi border. Patrolling the Shatt al-Arab at a time of war, the Royal Navy operates under rules of engagement designed by distant fainthearts with an eye to the polite fictions of "international law": If you're in a ''warship,'' you can't wage war. If you're in a ''destroyer,'' don't destroy anything. If you're in a "frigate," you're frigging done for.

All our military power and the jihadists know that they have little to fear from most of it. As long as they refrain from acts as blatant as 9-11, they can pretty much do what they want. I hate to sound so pessimistic, but my guess is that the Khumeinists are going to get away with this with minimal consequnces and that it will lead to more and more agression on their part.