Pathetic.

What is worse, that a gangster regime like Iran can abduct British sailers and marines without shots being fired or the Jimmy Carter like response of Tony Blair, a man who has never seen an enemy of the state he hasn't wanted to roll over for (see his attitude to the IRA & the Argentinian Junta for examples). Iran is not a powerful country and its economy is dependant on the export of oil. It would not be hard to prevent oil tankers from entering Iranian water and sabotage their oil pipelines but instead the government prefers to discuss Iran's piracy as though they were chatting about trade policy with Belgium. Now he is going to get 'tough', and has issued Iran with a blood curdling threat that.... the situation "move into a different phase". A warning whose gravitas might have been enhanced had it not been made on GMTV. Unsurprisngly this does not appear to have concentrated Iranian minds even though it does represent a scaling up of Blair's previous stance which was to talk descreetly to Tehran.