Britain’s Next Move

Wretchard has a good post up describing what he thinks the British need to do next. Basically, he believes Tony Blair needs to take things off the diplomatic track, and put the ball in the Ayatollahs’ court:

 …
Now that the diplomatic basketball has rimmed out, what Britain may consider doing now is what I suggested in the first place. Take the whole thing off the diplomatic track without initiating any overt hostilities.

Whitehall should withdraw the entire British diplomatic mission from Teheran and deal with the Ayatollahs through their representatives to the United Nations; they can expel every Iranian diplomat and official from the UK. And if possible, they should convince their European partners — for whatever they are worth — to do the same. Make the Ayatollahs beg for a diplomatic solution. Make them ask, “what’s next?” Make them beg the British to talk to them. At the minimum this will create uncertainty in Teheran. It forecloses nothing, even a return to diplomacy. And in that atmosphere of uncertainty, the naval force in the Gulf will becoming truly menacing. They should have done this from the first day, in my layman’s opinion. But hey, every day is the next day of the rest of our lives.

From the comments:

…
The Ayatollahs are counting on the British to stay inside the box, where they can be harried and finally destroyed at leisure, politically speaking. The first thing to do in this ambush is to break out of the kill zone. That kill zone destroyed Jimmy Carter. And the number one priority of Tony Blair should be to escape from it.

Teheran has by now decided to use the British sailors for a long term game. The task before the UK is to shift the fight onto ground where it can develop more power than its foe. It cannot do this within the strict and stylized confines of diplomacy….

Read the whole thing, and read some of the comments. It’s a mystery to me why the British went to the EU and UN when both those institutions have demonstrated, over and over, that they are feckless in the face of any international crisis. I worry that these institutions have become a religion for the European political establishment.