1) Since we're talking about British government employees and Iranian government employees, there's another possibility to consider: Somebody made a mistake, with either the Brits unintentionally crossing the line and getting captured for it, or the Iranians mistakenly crossing the line and thinking that the Brits were the ones on the wrong side of the line.

I have no doubt that both sides were at the very least under orders to be close to the line. When two groups of government employees are ordered to get really, really close to a line in contentious territory, mistakes are pretty easy to make.

2) For all I know, it may well be that "spying" is a term of art which can only refer to people out of uniform, in which case the Brits were not "spying". But they could have nonetheless been gathering intelligence, by one means or another. Granted, the crime of "spying" wouldn't apply, but my guess is that "gathering intelligence for a foreign power" would still be a crime under Iranian law. And we don't know whether "spying" or "espionage" or whatever was the best English translation of the Farsi legalese that the Iranians are using to describe the activities of these sailors.

But the legalese about spying and uniforms is moot, because this will be decided by factors other than the status of their activity under Iranian law or international law or whatever other legal code.

Somebody also mentioned some discrepancy between the official report and the word of this fishing captain. Having been in Iraq, I can tell you that the military doesn't make a habit of giving its exact daily itinerary to the random civilians it encounters, so if the fishing captain said "they were gonna continue patrolling" he probably doesn't know for sure those little boats weren't going back to their mother-ship first or if they had other objectives. Personally if I was a navy commander and my big boat could navigate this river or whatever, then I'd probably get my people back to the big boat instead of sending them all over the place in their rubber rafts.

Now, could the British guys have really been spying? Sure I guess so, if there's something in the water that could be spied on by men in rubber boats. But in broad daylight or I guess the early morning gloom why bother? Especially after first stopping a fishing boat? Why goto all the trouble of a ruse like that? It's best to keep those things low-profile, not stop and get a bunch of peoples' attention on the way.

If you wanna really villainize the British in this maybe you could say that they for some reason confused their own people into going into Iranian waters so they WOULD get captured and thusly justify some kind of conflict with Iran.

More than likely this whole thing is just a misunderstanding.

The most famous example involving US forces probably remains the Pueblo Incident. The US insisted that the Pueblo was in international waters while the North Koreans insisted it was not. The North Koreans turned out to be telling the truth - the Pueblo was over the line; what's more, it was over the line intentionally.

Contrariwise, a little-noted fact of last summer's war between Hezbollah and Israel was that Hez claimed they captured the two Israeli soldiers on their side of the border. I poked into the matter a little and feel comfortable saying that truth was on Israel's side in that incident; it was Hezbollah that lied.

Point being, this is a particular class of incident that we know governments WILL lie about if they're in the wrong on the law of it. We know our government will lie; we know hostile governments will lie. If they put forces where they're "not supposed to be." It's a settled pattern. The only thing we don't know is where the forces actually were. The opposing statements of the involved governments, by themselves, cannot clarify the truth of the situation, because it is the kind of thing governments will lie about.

Is that less fishy than it sounds to me? I confess to zero knowledge of anything naval after 1945.

Via James Joyner, who remarks It would be harder for Iran to be much more isolated in the international community, as even the Russians have backed away from them in recent months. Still, sending such a strong signal that they......

I would like to believe that this is a overreach by the Iranians, but that is just a desire, not a judgment.

I do think that Petraeus's collection of Iranians presents a number of interesting options over the next several weeks.

The former although “zero probative value” sounds an awful lot like the latter to me.

Then I wrote unclearly, you read sloppily, or you're confusing categories. By the former meaning of "reject," I mean, "Their statements mean nothing one way or the other as to whether something is true." [Call this "Reject(A)]." By the latter, I mean, "If they say it, it must be a lie." [Call this "Reject(B)." Those are not the same thing. I hope I've done a better job drawing the distinction this time.

On the matter itself, my understanding is that when you said "reject" you meant the former, and the former is exactly what I'm doing, so on your terms I'm rejecting their statements. In that case, it's a perfectly intelligible use of "reject," and I accept your construction. I "reject(A)" their statements. FWIW, I think I'm right to do so and you are wrong not to, but if we at least agree on what is happening, that's something.

Perhaps our difference is that I think that zero probative value is a bit too extreme.

Fair enough, Jim, but you didn’t answer the question. What standard of proof do you require?

Dave, thanks for the link. It's kind of a second-hand report - the guy doesn't claim to have witnessed the arrests personally - but it's still interesting. Per this report, the two ribs detained had already left the merchant ship to continue patrolling, while early reports from the Brits seemed to claim that the Iranians interrupted them in the act of inspecting the vessel, so it problematizes the first version of events. But the first version of events is usually wrong anyway - slippage on the timing question doesn't prove the Iranian case.

I think that a certain amount of skepticism is warranted but that simply rejecting an official statement from the British simply because it is an official statement from the British is going too far.

To clarify, what do you mean by "rejecting" here? I put zero probative value on British or American official statements, meaning, I don't assume what they're telling me is true. I think that's a kind of "rejection." But I don't assume that they are lying until proven otherwise either, because I figure they'll tell the truth if it isn't inconvenient to the bureaucratic and political imperatives of the moment, and sometimes they'll tell the truth even if it hurts if they believe they really can't get away with lying. Assuming that whatever they say the opposite must be true would be another kind of "rejection." Are you talking about the former kind or the latter?

Has anyone confirmed that the Brits did board a ship that day?

Well, there is a first hand report.

I'm not sure I'd characterize it as “agnosticism”. I think that a certain amount of skepticism is warranted but that simply rejecting an official statement from the British simply because it is an official statement from the British is going too far.