Were the sailors set up?

Conspiracy theories bubbling under

An Iranian proverb maintains that if you trip over a pebble, you should remember it was put there by a Briton. It is hardly surprising that the crisis is proving fertile ground for Iranian conspiracy theorists.“It was a British trap that we fell into,” a well-travelled and multilingual Iranian businessman sighed with conviction.

Britain, according to the theory, wants to put Iran under pressure on one of its most sensitive territorial issues – the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which forms the historical, racial and religious divide between Persians and Arabs and has been disputed for centuries.The Royal Navy had deliberately used the 15 as bait for the Revolutionary Guards naval units, according to the theory.