Another take on the UK-Iran conflict in the Shatt-al-Arab
This correspondent has been to the Shatt-al-Arab. It's a busy and tricky waterway, to say the least. Iraqi fishing boats share the waters with Iranian patrol boats. From the Iraqi shore one can see the Iranian shore, flags aflutter.These remain extremely disputed waters. In 1975, a treaty was signed in Algiers between the shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein. The center of the river was supposed to be the border. Then Saddam invaded Iran in 1980. After the Iran-Iraq War that this sparked ended in 1988, and even after both Gulf wars, things remain perilously inconclusive: a new treaty still has not been signed....Western corporate media overwhelmingly take for granted that the British were in Iraqi or "international"waters (wrong: these are disputed Iran/Iraq waters).
Gee, you don't see this in the BBC or New York Times coverage.