Iran Took Advantage of the Royal Navy's Weakness

Great Britain once had a marvelous navy, its warships boasting names like Courageous, Dauntless, Indefatigable, and Ultimatum. Her fleets were more than a source of national pride—they manifested it, a physical assurance that Britain had the ability to see to its national interests.In the early 1980s, not too long after Margaret Thatcher became prime minister, the Royal Navy sailed sixty-four surface combatants and sixteen submarines. Today, the British fleet has dwindled to a mere nineteen surface ships, half of which are in maintenance, and only ten submarines. This is the result of serial underinvestment in defense, a condition witnessed throughout most of Europe and even in the United States.The consequence of this underinvestment is that Britain and other Western nations today are minimally able to protect their own interests, with almost no ability to deter bad behavior of the sort we have recently seen in the Gulf from the perennially thuggish Iran.In reality, although it sounds harsh, Britain has only itself to blame for the seizure of its oil tankers. It has chosen to become a soft target—as has most of Europe—which encourages bad behavior by those willing to take what they want.Iran’s recent attacks on oil tankers would be surprising were it not for its forty-year pattern of problematic behavior enabled, even incentivized, by the West’s tolerance, apathy, occasional complicity, and self-imposed weakness to do anything about it. Ever since the mullahs seized power in 1979, the odious regime in Tehran has consistently employed violence and the threat of violence to maintain power at home and extend its influence across the Middle East.

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