Fail, Britannia! Iranian Dinghies Humiliate Royal Navy

With a “no-deal Brexit” looming, Britain seems hell-bent on becoming an island unto itself. But nothing demonstrates how unprepared it is to go it alone quite like the way Iran humiliated its once-vaunted Royal Navy on the high-seas last week.

The Royal Navy does not have enough warships to match UK ambitions, a Defence Minister has admitted, as a dramatic recording of a high-seas confrontation between a British frigate and Iranian forces emerged.

Defence Minister and former Army officer Tobias Ellwood lashed out at the strength of the fleet, which includes just 13 frigates and six destroyers, amid the deepening crisis over a UK-flagged oil tanker seized in the Gulf by the Revolutionary Guard.

(Mirror, July 21, 2019)

Truth be told, Britain sailed into this humiliation with the same kind of delusions of grandeur with which it is exiting the European Union.

Reports abound detailing how Britain’s post-Brexit economy will stagnate as it fails to strike the bilateral trade deals Brexiteers are promising. Likewise, reports abound detailing how Britain has become so dependent on America’s NATO-led armada, it has lost the ability to sail the high-seas as a respected naval power.

In fact, here is how a report in the Mirror presaged five years ago the spectacle that played out last week:

The shrunken Royal Navy now has nearly twice as many admirals as surface warships.

Despite destroyers and frigates being cut to a paltry 19, the Senior Service still boasts 33 admirals on £100,000 a year.

Some 5,000 sailors and marines have been axed in defence cuts, leaving the UK with just 30,000 fighting mariners – and a smaller Navy than in Lord Nelson’s time.

(October 15, 2014)

This is why nobody should be surprised by the extraordinary recordings referenced above. They show the inevitable test of wills between a British warship and Iranian dinghies, which included this exchange:

The Iranians say: ‘If you obey, you will be safe. … I want to inspect the ship for security reasons.’ The response comes from HMS Montrose, which says: ‘This is British battleship F236: You must not impair, impede, obstruct or hamper the passage of the Stena Impero.’

(London Express, July 21, 2019)

The Iranians not only ignored that response; they launched a commando raid to seize the Stena Impero as that British battleship bobbed haplessly nearby. Then, to add insult to that injury, the Iranians

Paraded for cameras, first pics inside Brit oil tanker seized by Iran show terrified crew huddled on floor.

One image shows the crew of the Stena Impero, currently held captive in the Persian Gulf, huddled on the floor and surrounded by makeshift bedding.

(The Sun, July 22, 2019)

You’d think Britain would’ve been keen to maintain the Royal Navy that helped it fend off Argentina’s attempt to seize the Falkland Islands in 1982. Instead, Britain allowed that navy to wither so much (from “savage downsizing”), it is now half the size it was just 10 years ago.

Again, the only thing that explains this is its penny-wise, pound-foolish reliance on the NATO alliance. But, with a reckless and temperamental President Trump as the de facto commander in chief, that alliance is proving far less reliable than its founders could have ever imagined.

Meanwhile, it does not bode well for Britain’s navy or economy that Boris Johnson is tipped to take over as prime minister this week. After all, as I duly warned in “Meet Boris Johnson, Britain’s Head Brexiteer and Presumptive Prime Minister,” June 25, 2019, he’s