Immediate threat to Gulf oil flow lifted

The UK and Iran have shown that they do not want the seizure of a British-flagged oil tanker to be the trigger for an armed conflict

The decision by members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to board the Stena Impero off Oman and force it to sail to Bandar Abbas might well have been the spark to ignite a war in the Gulf. In the event, the UK and Iranian governments are showing clearly that they do not want this to happen. The UK's foreign minister, Jeremy Hunt, while describing the seizure of the tanker as an act of piracy, stressed his country's "desire to de-escalate" the crisis. Instead of direct military action to resolve the tanker issue, he proposed working with other European nations to work out a joint strategy to protect ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Java